Marilynn Larew's Blog - Posts Tagged "i-dead-in-dubai-i"
The Writer’s Life: Pride Goeth Before a Fall
Recently a couple of interviewers asked me how I dealt with writers block. I blithely gave what I suspect is a pretty standard answer: keep on writing. It may be garbage for a while, but you’ll be back to writing good stuff in no time. If that doesn’t work, step away, go shopping, have lunch with a friend, and, in difficult cases, clean the house. If that doesn’t work, I advised, the problem is more serious. There’s probably something wrong with the plot, and you need to go back and find out where you went astray.
That was yesterday, the words of a writer who had never had a serious block. This is today.
Three weeks ago, in the second draft of Dead in Dubai, I added a new and major character. And there I hung, like Balaam’s ass, unable to go forward or backward. A writer’s block the size of the Great Wall of China. It was probably a punishment for my earlier cavalier treatment of the problem.
I thought longingly of doing away with Fred and the Red Herring that goes with him. It would be so easy. I could just pick up the next chapter like a dropped stitch and keep going, averting my gaze from the sagging middle of my plot as I passed by. But I invented Fred and his Herring to prop up the sagging middle of my plot. The problem is that with Fred in the picture, I’m going to have to rethink the whole middle plot and possibly a good part of the end as well. In other words, I’m going to have to think, something I’d prefer to avoid if at all possible.
I tried butting my head against the problem and just kept on typing. I knew I was writing garbage, and the problem wasn’t going away. I fell back and regrouped. I walked away. I went shopping. I went out to lunch. I even considered cleaning the house. None of it worked.
The only thing that worked was – well – work. I started threading Fred through the earlier part of the book and smoothing the edges so the joins wouldn’t show. By the time I got to the middle I knew Fred well enough to sketch where we are going next from the gigantic Red Herring to the final takedown of the bad guys. It’s rough as a cob, and the sketch is very thin in places, and I’m still not sure whether the Red Herring is actually a Red Herring or an integral part of the solution, but it’s a restart of the engine.
“Can you be an airport bum?” I asked him.
“I can be any kind of bum you want,” he replied.
It isn’t Shakespeare, but it will do for now. There’s always the third draft.
I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’ll never speak blithely about writer’s block again.
That was yesterday, the words of a writer who had never had a serious block. This is today.
Three weeks ago, in the second draft of Dead in Dubai, I added a new and major character. And there I hung, like Balaam’s ass, unable to go forward or backward. A writer’s block the size of the Great Wall of China. It was probably a punishment for my earlier cavalier treatment of the problem.
I thought longingly of doing away with Fred and the Red Herring that goes with him. It would be so easy. I could just pick up the next chapter like a dropped stitch and keep going, averting my gaze from the sagging middle of my plot as I passed by. But I invented Fred and his Herring to prop up the sagging middle of my plot. The problem is that with Fred in the picture, I’m going to have to rethink the whole middle plot and possibly a good part of the end as well. In other words, I’m going to have to think, something I’d prefer to avoid if at all possible.
I tried butting my head against the problem and just kept on typing. I knew I was writing garbage, and the problem wasn’t going away. I fell back and regrouped. I walked away. I went shopping. I went out to lunch. I even considered cleaning the house. None of it worked.
The only thing that worked was – well – work. I started threading Fred through the earlier part of the book and smoothing the edges so the joins wouldn’t show. By the time I got to the middle I knew Fred well enough to sketch where we are going next from the gigantic Red Herring to the final takedown of the bad guys. It’s rough as a cob, and the sketch is very thin in places, and I’m still not sure whether the Red Herring is actually a Red Herring or an integral part of the solution, but it’s a restart of the engine.
“Can you be an airport bum?” I asked him.
“I can be any kind of bum you want,” he replied.
It isn’t Shakespeare, but it will do for now. There’s always the third draft.
I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’ll never speak blithely about writer’s block again.
