My Name Is Danielle, and I Have Writer's Block

It's high time that I admit it: I have writer's block.

Like, for real and for serious. This isn't the "Oh, pooh, I'm bored with this story" kind of writer's block. This is the actual "Everything I write sucks and is so stupid omg I hate it all" kind of writer's block.

It's the kind of writer's block where you spend all day struggling to squeeze out a page and a half (web-formatted) and then the next morning delete everything you wrote because it sucks out loud. Which, as you can imagine, is more than a little frustrating.

Okay, it's a lot frustrating. It's tear-your-hair-out, gnashing-of-teeth, rending-of-garments frustrating.

Nothing comes out the way I want and even my tried and true method of the Rewrite Project hasn't managed to help. (I tried, honest, I did! But I got three pages into it and stopped ... because it sucked. See above re: "it's so stupid and I hate it all.")

So where do I go from here? Clearly, just throwing in the towel is not an option. But neither is sitting here writing and deleting and writing and deleting until the end of time. The last time I had a block like this, I broke through it by trying fic for a new fandom. Unfortunately, that is not an option this time, as none of my new shows have fic potential. (I typically need to be overly obsessed with a show in order to attempt fic for it, and I'm not at the omgsquee-supergeek point with any of the newer shows I've been watching.)

I do have a last-ditch effort up my sleeve, though: a vague idea for a new pre-series Supernatural fanfic. Y'see, at the beginning of last month, I attended a fan convention (I wasn't kidding when I said that I'm a nerd) and have since been mainlining the show. Since I've pretty much been eating, sleeping, and breathing Supernatural, the wheels in my head have been turning.

The basic idea (which is pretty much all I've come up with so far) is this: John is on a hunt in some fictional Massachusetts town, and the middle school that Sam starts at is haunted. The boys--Sam, especially--are fairly new at the hunting thing, but Dean recognizes the signs and tries getting a hold of John, but he can't. So he and Sam have to deal with it on their own (with help from Bobby via phone calls, of course.)

Yeah, the reason John's incommunicado is because John is ridiculously hard for me. But so is writing in general right now, so, y'know. Sue me.

Anyway, my plan is to try to start this at some point this weekend. Here's hoping that this 1) works out at all, and 2) gets my creative juices flowing again!

Problem: Recognized (I Think)

I know I've said this many, many times (more times than I want to count, really), but I think I've figured out part of my problem with my voice in The Witch of November: I feel like I'm being too verbose.

When I read through the first chapter, I get this, "Get on with it" reaction. Which, clearly, is not the reaction I want. I feel like it's too much exposition and not enough action, even though the exposition is kind of necessary.

Like before with my needless drama issue, I now have to figure out how to provide enough exposition so that my eventual readers will have some clue as to what's going on, but not enough to bog down the whole chapter.

Wish me luck.

Writing Exercise #3

These exercises have been both helpful and minorly frustrating.

Helpful, because they do get the juices flowing. It's liberating to just write and not worry about it. Not agonize over "Does this sound good?" and "How can I punch this up?" and "Will I be able to sell this eventually?" They're what I like most about writing: the creation. Taking one word and creating a little vignette out of it.

But they've also been frustrating because they are just flowing. They're coming and they're coming easy, which makes the difficulties I'm still having with The Witch of November all the more aggravating. Don't get me wrong, I think it's getting better, but it's not 100% perfect, and for a perfectionist? Yeah, you can imagine the irritation, heh.

Anywho. Jumping into the SVU-verse for tonight's exercise:

Prompt: warmth
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU (set in the early part of season 5)
Character(s): Casey Novak, Olivia Benson

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A deep shiver ran down Casey Novak’s spine. She didn’t think she’d ever feel warm again.

It was all too much. She hadn’t asked for this, and she certainly didn’t want it. Didn’t want to spend her days in a living nightmare, down in the trenches, chasing after the depraved human beings that made up this new world in which she found herself.

She poured a generous amount of whiskey from a newly purchased bottle into her coffee mug. She didn’t like whiskey very much and certainly didn’t like to drink her hard liquor straight, but she needed something to calm her shivering limbs and the dull ache in her head.

“Forgive me if I’m being forward,” said a soft voice from her office door, “but you don’t seem like the drowning-your-sorrows type.”

Casey looked up to find Olivia Benson standing just outside the open door, a gentle and friendly smile on her face. “I’m not,” she admitted.

“That’s a very dangerous habit to start, Counselor.” The detective crossed the threshold and eased down onto the leather sofa underneath Casey’s office window. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

As a matter of fact, she didn’t. Baring her soul was not something that Casey did easily, and she and Olivia had barely been working together three weeks. Plus the detectives hadn’t exactly been the friendliest to her, and Olivia especially had had moments of downright hostility. But as she met the detective’s eyes, the words tumbled from her mouth, unbidden: “I can’t do this.”

Olivia raised a single eyebrow, waiting for the young attorney to continue.

“I … I’m sure you heard, I came here from White Collar.”

The detective’s eyes reflected a sudden understanding. “Kind of a culture shock, huh?”

That? Was putting it mildly. “I mean, the worst quality in people I’m used to seeing is greed. The worst I saw in terms of crime scenes? Horrible, inefficient filing systems. This …” She indicated an open file folder on her desk, lurid photos from a rape kit done on a nine-year-old staring up at her. “This is a whole new level of … I don’t even know.”

For a long moment, Olivia didn’t say a word, seeming to consider her response, trying to decide what was best for the situation. In the end, she stood and grasped Casey’s jacket off the coat hook. “Come on,” she said, tossing the jacket to the ADA.

“Where are we going?” Casey asked, her brow furrowing in confusion and just a touch of apprehension.

“We’re going to get some coffee,” the detective answered, that gentle smile returning to her face, “and we’re going to talk. It’ll be a lot more productive than losing yourself in a bottle of whiskey alone in your office.”

Though Casey was unsure about opening up even more to the detective, she had to admit that Olivia had a reasonable point. So she shrugged on her jacket and followed Olivia out of her office.

As they walked down the hall, Olivia slipped her arm around Casey’s shoulders and squeezed, then let her go. In that moment, the shivering stopped, and in the next, Casey believed that the warmth she needed could come from something as simple as having a cup of coffee with a new friend

More Frustration

For a couple of months now, I've been stuck on the first few chapters of The Witch of November, and I think I've finally figured out my problem: I feel like the story's getting bogged down with the drama.

Unfortunately the drama is kind of necessary. See, what happens is this: Charlie hides in the Witch's house to annoy Allie. By the time Allie finds him, he's unconscious and the Witch herself is standing over him. Allie then has to call for an ambulance because she can't wake Charlie up and it goes from there. I also have the police questioning Allie about what happened (because he'd been strangled) and then her parents questioning her as well.

I suppose I could take out the stuff with the police but I truly believe that the police would be involved. I figure Allie's 911 call would have alerted the police and they would certainly want to question a little girl if they found that a young boy had been beaten up and strangled and she was the only witness.

I also suppose I could change it so that Charlie isn't quite so hurt, thereby taking out the ambulance and police entirely, but Charlie's attack is Allie's big motivator. It's because she's trying to save Charlie that she gathers the courage to explore the Witch's house.

See, Allie is kind of a scaredy-cat. She's the kind of kid who slept with a nightlight until the fourth grade. She's that kid who hears the other kids say, "Hey, let's go to the climbing rock!" and thinks of all the broken bones they could get if they fell off the climbing rock. Allie would never go into a haunted building where her best friend had been attacked unless she had a really good reason. My reason right now: trying to find a way to bring Charlie out of his coma.

So where do I go from here? I'm not quite sure. I suppose I could think of something else that could get Allie to face her fears but really, the Charlie-in-the-hospital drama is kind of essential to the conceit of my story, here.

I think I'll try to trim down the calling-for-the-ambulance, getting-to-the-hospital chapter (it's by far my longest so I'm sure I can find ways to cut it) and then go from there.

Cross your fingers for me, please? Because I really don't feel like rewriting the whole first like, ten chapters of my novel.

Frustration Level: High

Writing is just like anything else: it looks easy until you try it.

I used to think the hardest part was getting the story out. Then I became entrenched in the world of edits.

I mentioned in my previous entry that I don't have a real process. I just write and think of my next steps as I go. I have run into problems doing that, namely when I get stuck, I can't jump ahead to another part in the story and then go back to where I was stuck. If, for example, I get stuck in Chapter Six, I can't jump ahead to Chapter Eight because I don't always know what Chapter Eight is going to be, you know?

So when I get stuck, I have to plow through it until I get unstuck, all the while thinking, "Oh, I can go back and fix it later."

You know what's harder than I realized? Fixing it later.

Part of my problem is I'm attempting a voice I've only written in once or twice before. I managed it in a Supernatural fanfic I wrote a couple years ago called "Corpse Fire" and I remember it being relatively effortless back then. Not so much now.

For some reason, the first draft of The Witch of November is ... not really verbose, but written in a more adult voice than I really want. And trying to change the voice I've already written is freakin' hard.

So, I want it to read roughly like this:

“I’ll be right back,” Allie muttered, more to herself than to Charlie. She could do this, right? Because really, it wouldn’t take more than a minute to find the ball and run back through the fence. She could totally handle sixty little seconds. Besides, the longer she stood there, the more nervous she’d be. This kind of rescue mission needed to be done quickly and without thinking. Kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid.

But paragraphs like that are kind of hard to come by.

Most of it is like this:
 
Of course, what should be was never what usually happened. Allie stared at the sheets of paper with a frown on her face for a few minutes. Nothing jumped out at her; the spells or rituals all seemed to have different ingredients and different methods. Some were what Allie thought of as white magic: candles, herbs, blessings. Others were classic examples of dark magic; nothing called for eye of newt or any other cliché ingredients, but most of them called for drops of blood, wilted flowers, and other things that called up images of Halloween and the macabre.
 
Which is ... okay, but it lacks both the punch and the humor I want. It also doesn't sound like an eleven-year-old.

(And people thought I was kidding when I said the first draft was terrible! Ha!)
 
So what do I do now? Try to figure out whatever I was doing when I wrote that first paragraph up there, hee.