I was stuck yesterday. (I know, to many it appears I'm stuck most days, but yesterday, I truly was up to my neck against a brick wall.)
I'm not an SOP (seat of the pants) writer, but neither am I a detailed plotter. SOP writers are intuitive plotters, they just don't know it. Detailed plotters are engineers and for me to write that way would kill off the creativity and excitement of writing. I fall somewhere in between, probably closer to a pantster than a plotter.
I pretty much know what the scene-after-the-next scene is going to deal with. It's the Next Scene that was making me feel like a dud. Every idea I had that made sense, made too much sense. Every idea was flat and boring. Aaargh. There's no worse feeling in the world for a writer.
So, in a quiet predawn moment, as my thoughts rambled between whether or not potatoes could be frozen (turns out, not so much) and what time the snow was supposed to arrive, and who knows what else, I decided to focus those schizoid thoughts on options for my Next Scene.
And, by golly, I think I've got it.
On creativity:
. . . Nor is there any need for us to sit and wait, inactively, until an unexpected lucky coincidence presents us with a fruitful thought. Indeed, we can--by our conscious efforts--prepare its appearance. ~ ALFRED HOCK
CR: First the Dead.
It's all better with friends.
"... everythng in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." —Sylvia Plath
