[image error]I hadn’t heard the term filler chapter until I was maybe twelve, and I while I’d struggled with those chapters in the past, I hadn’t had a name for them. My first serious book that I tried to write (okay, “serious”,) was about this girl who went in her mess of a closet and found a door that led to another world. I had a ridiculous amount of trouble trying to write this book, because I kept getting stuck. I knew how I wanted the book to start, and I knew how I wanted it to end, but I couldn’t get through the middle. It was filler, and I didn’t know it yet.

It took me three weeks to write the latest chapter of Pioneered. I started it over winter break and then had very little time to write during school. What’s more, I didn’t know what I wanted to have happen in that chapter. I knew how it had to end, and where it needed to start- but not what would be in the middle.

It was filler.

I’m not incredibly proud of this chapter. Nothing important happened; the dialogue was pointless; it dragged on and on until finally it ended. There was some good thought and I did enjoy the end, but before that, I struggled to get through it. And over and over, I just wanted to delete it and start over. But I didn’t.

See, I made a mistake a few weeks ago of trying to get critiques on a book while I was writing a different one. That was a terrible idea, and I should have known better, because I’ve made that same mistake maybe five or separate times and have regretted it each one. Once you get critiques, once you start looking at even one work for things you need to change, you can’t stop. You’re writing, and you realize, that’s a horrible sentence. Or you have a critique about your dialogue (which was kind of really awful) for another book, and you find that in this draft, every bit of dialogue you write is also kind of really awful, and you just want to fix it right then and there. You’re stuck thinking critically about your work, and you can’t even write because of it!

That’s why I’m against editing while I write. Some writers will do this- they’ll type up a chapter and spend a week or so fixing it before moving on to the next one. And while this would definitely save me the headache of trying to fix a lot of stuff at once (more on revisions another day), I find that I can’t write when I’m thinking too hard about the way my writing sounds.

And then I get blocked.

So I took three weeks to write 2,100 words.

Usually I can do that in a day, if I have the time.

I often have this trouble at the start of a chapter- it’s hard to get started, and it all sounds terrible until you get in the rhythm of writing. In fifth grade, when I was still trying to write my book about the closet, I complained about block to a friend’s mom, who is a writer. I used to keep a little notebook with me, and whenever I met an author, I’d ask them for advice. I’d write down their responses in this little Vera Bradley notebook I got as a party favor in fourth grade, and I’d smile for having this collction of tips. My friend’s mom told me, “If you have writer’s block, just sit yourself down and make yourself write a hundred words.”

Just a hundred words. That’s it. And those first few words are going to be rough, but then you’ve started, and the next hundred won’t be so bad. It’s like riding a bike- you wobble a bit when you first get on, but then your momentum propels you forward.

This chapter wasn’t great, especially not at the start, but it picked up towards the end. And the next one will be better. I can fix those wobbly words later- the important thing was getting on the bike.

And now I can ride.