The Writer's Swamp

It's not writer's block, because I can open a window on a blog and blather away. Or an email to a friend.

But last night, I opened a new window in my novel, and was rather stumped. All the good ideas I had for a second draft were spent in about three sentences. Three very very bad sentences.

I have never had this problem. I've always seen things in my head and been able to write them down. I don't get it at all.

My plan is to read the stack of writing and creativity help books I have piled up, and take furious notes. It worked in the past. I'm not sure why this novel is so hard.

It's a little Christmas story. It's supposed to be charming, quirky and rather simple. There are some huge dark forces at play in the novel, as embodied in the characters (3 main characters, 2 minor), but the darkness and trouble is sorta suspended for the time of the novel, and in some cases, worked out and lightened. Maybe I'm all bogged down in the darkness right now.

For example, there's cancer, hospice care, Mexican drug cartel violence, poverty and crass commercialism. That just screams Christmas, doesn't it? Think Little Miss Sunshine or Love, Actually.

Anyway, I think I need to write this out, but cannot get past the beginning. I have one beginning but it starts too big, too far back. I need to roll those first draft beginnings into the seoncd draft as flashbacks.

Now, about those books: I have Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, The War of Art (How to win the inner creative battles, etc.), No Plot? No Problem by the NaNo creator, The Plot Thickens by Lukeman, The First Five Pages by Lukeman, and The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing. Usually what happens for me is that I read along for a few pages and then am overcome with the urge to write.

Let's hope that happens next, and that it's productive writing, not the usual self-indulgent noodling I've been doing.

And if I go too far down that road, ALL of novel writing is self-indulgent noodling. The purpose of the first draft is to get down the rough framework and see if you have any kind of spark, or even tinder that a spark can ignite. I think I've done that, at least, to my eye. I am not sure any outside reader could look at this drivel and see a novel. When I tell the plot to people, they do respond somewhat favorably.

So then, the purpose of a second draft is to actually make it something of a novel, with a beginning, middle and end. Adding what needs to be added, subtracting, deleting, altering, shifting and re-organizing (or organizing in the first place).

I am really not sure what mindset is required for this. And I'm not sure if it isn't a screenplay. However, I know that I want the end result to be a novel. Thinking in screenplay terms is NOT helping, and so I am thinking that I might need to declare a moratorium on TV and movies. Which will be terribly difficult for me... I really don't have much else going on but my handful of shows during the week. That's how I'm coping with the pressures of getting through the day.

Helping my son with a language arts project has been good. To hear/read the young adult fiction reminds me that I do have the skills. But seeing the book jackets, esp J.K. Rowling's monster fame, is strangely intimidating.

So, I'm at a somewhat bitter and scary crossroads, and maybe that's what writer's block is about. I have to choose to step off the road and into the swamp, wading knee-deep through the tangle of mud, reeds, vines and frogs. No breadcrumb trail is possible either. Tie a rope around my waist? If I pull three times, haul me in?