Switching creative gears (and grinding them all the way)

[rj_anderson]

I've been trying to work on Touching Indigo all day, but my brain refuses to connect with it. I thought that giving myself a week off after finishing my revisions on Knife would help me switch gears -- especially since I took part of that time to re-read the first seven chapters of Indigo and think about where I wanted to go next. But no...

I don't know what to do about this except to keep plugging away out of sheer bloodymindedness, and if that means sitting down every afternoon and evening for a week and typing random nonsense for an hour, so be it. Eventually, I know -- I hope -- I'll break through this fuzzy mental state and get excited about the book again. It will start haunting my dreams and pestering me with ideas at inconvenient times and places. I'll have a hard time getting to sleep because I'll be plotting out the next scene in my head. If it happened to me with Knife after mumbletyseven revisions, it can surely happen with this book that I haven't even finished yet.

It's frustrating, though, waiting for that to happen. Right now writing feels like staring at a plate full of my least favorite vegetables.

What do all of you do to kickstart yourselves when you're feeling creatively blank?

Comments

[fandoria.livejournal.com]

Man that sucks. I just spent about 3 weeks blocked. One week of that was a self-imposed break, the next week I was sick, and this past week was winter break. But every time I tried to sit down and write, nothing came. My mind was disturbingly blank. But I finally had a breakthrough over the weekend and I've got stuff in my head again and I was able to write today.

It stinks when stuff like this happens, but you will get a breakthrough. I hope you get yours soon.