Tea break

[calissa]

I had an encounter with writer’s block this week. I’ve been working on a post about fanfic that’s just not coming together. Over at Strange Horizons a couple of weeks ago, Renay of Ladybusiness shared a bit about her first fandom and her relationship to fanfic. I’d already been thinking about my own relationship to fandom and fanfic, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to share some of those thoughts. However, the more I tried to write the post the more I struggled. I just couldn’t figure out whether my post was adding to a conversation and allowing my readers to get to know me better or whether it was navel-gazing and out of step with the tone of the blog. The closer the deadline got, the harder I tried and the more frustrated I felt.

So I decided to step away and give myself a break. This is the first time I’ve experienced writer’s block in relation to the blog, but it has certainly happened with my fiction before. When it does, taking a break is something I find helpful. Sometimes I work on something else and sometimes I step away from writing altogether. Either way, it gives my subconscious a chance to chew over the problem. It always comes up with an answer. Perhaps in this case it will clarify what I’m trying to say or point out the post not something I need to write after all.

While my subconscious stews, I’m going to make myself a big pot of tea and dive back into my current book (The Art of Effective Dreaming by Gillian Polack). I’d also love to hear from you.

What do you do when writer’s block hits?

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Comments

[onewhitecrow]

I could always write through the ordinary everything-I-do-is-rubbish kind on the premise that what wasn't salvageable was practice, and what was would benefit from being shown to an alternate point of view. Now I try to stay alive and wait. Tea helps.

Fanfiction confuses and frightens me, probably because of the way I relate to characters as True Things for their world; people rather than constructs...it's all right with modern mythological characters like Batman or Applejack, or charachers from plays, as their stories are myths or performances, alive and mutable as folk songs, making them more akin to spirits. Otherwise, though, when it's someone with a defined and page-pinned life...at best it's like seeing a friend being drugged (the offerer of substances may mean only relaxed recreation and treat them very well, but the idea still gives me an anxious tightening in the chest) and at worst sets off my Calling Things Other Things illogic (a reason I will never watch the TV ASoIaF). As you can probably tell, I stay out of it unless something's put under my nose.

The usual argument is that essentually "everything's fanfiction", but y'know, essentially all humans are African. Whilst I wouldn't stop small Western children engaging their creativity/sympathy playing lions and Maasi herders, I would find the same behaviour from Western adults perplexing and nebulously unsettling.

...aand that is my opinion, whether it provides you with a brick to stand on in regards to knowing you're adding to a conversation or is just me pulling an "old man yells at cloud".

[calissa]

Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion. I think I probably relate to characters in a similar way to you, though not quite the same. I've never been adverse to imagining future scenarios for characters, but tend to be strict about adherence to canon. One reason I never wrote fanfic was because I was never convinced I could get the characterisation exactly right. However, I find myself better able to approach it these days and have actually started reading a bit. I'm not entirely sure why this has come about.

Tea definitely helps. Have you been drinking any particular blend lately?

[onewhitecrow]

Oh, I can imagine future or hypothetical scenarios for people, but they're not True Things that happened, even for folks whose existence is not of our reality. Fanfiction...sort of presents those as True Things, but one can't determine, and argh. That's not even touching slash (where the 'drugged friend' metaphor gets horribly pertinent). I have friends who can "shrink" their characters and write them as children in the present, not from that character's memory, and that messes with my head something fierce.

Fanfiction for what? Maybe you just know more fanfic writers now, and so trust a greater proportion?

Jasmine Huang Shen Ya, a kind of woody green that the relatively subtle jasmine does something magical to...the kind of precious and immortal jade-inna-cup that would surely transport an Oriental poet to the raptures of heaven. Kent & Sussex also do an Earl Grey that smells and tastes *amazing*, and that's coming from someone to whom Earl Grey is a summer tea usually taken half/half with darjeeling or a barbaric mongrel teabag in the pot to tone it down. Heh, I even had my landlady (who hates earl grey) sniff the jar and she agreed that it smelled so good she might try it. If you haven't tried it, I would urge you to. Leaves Twinings' in the dust.

[calissa]

You're right about me knowing more fanfic writers now. It was never really a thing when I was growing up (at least among my friends). So until recently, all the writers I know have preferred to concentrate on their own original fiction. I definitely think knowing and trusting more fanfic writers has changed my attitude.

The jasmine and the Earl Grey both sound amazing. I'm not a big fan of Twinings' Earl Grey. I find it a bit harsh.

[onewhitecrow]

I suspect it's really taken off with the advent of internet culture, which encourages a view that anything left out in public is for the public's use/repurposing and facilitates sharing. I suspect we that grew up with a background where copying a favoured author was a stage to be grown out of will always have reservations and a sense of missed opportunity when someone chooses to write 'The Thing I Like, With Improvements' rather than something like the thing they like, but better.

Plus for people like me - and you, I suspect - there's always the instinctive "but what if they did it to my babies", however distant we think we are from our characters and however much they would/n't care.

It is a very good jasmine, and is lasting me. Aye, I just mentioned it because Twining's is the blend's originator and was the standard until recently. Clipper's version is also pretty aggressive, hence the halving.

[moonvoice]

Your difficulty with writing that article about fanfiction reminds me a little of a sort of microcosmic view of the issue a lot of writers have with writing fanfiction in the macrocosm, questions like 'does this contribute' 'what am i adding' 'how is this meaningful' etc. At the end of the day, perhaps you need to approach the article the way most people have to approach writing fanfiction? And be aware that maybe you even need that similar approach? Which is that...fanfiction is anarchy, whether a very mild form, or a very crass form, it deliberately steps away from the norm (as much as it can anyway). So perhaps even articles about it need to be approached in a slightly different way too?

But maybe not! It could be something else entirely.

As for me, it depends on why I have writer's block:

1. It's a really hard to write scene (like...4+ characters in the same scene). In which case I make myself sit down and write it. But am forgiving if I can only manage a small amount at a time.

2. My health. In which case I have to rest.

3. My mental health. In which case I need to assess what's really going on. Anxiety over social media? Anxiety over shame issues? Stress over just doing too much? Heaping too much on myself? Etc.

Usually it's the first one though, luckily.

[calissa]

Some great thoughts here, thank you for sharing them! I'm still contemplating the fanfic article and am not sure yet whether I will go ahead. I'm a little amused that you identify fanfiction as anarchy because I think it really highlights to me why I struggle with it so much. If life were D&D, I'd be a lawful alignment and I struggle with chaos.

I like how you've broken down your typical causes of writer's block. I was particularly interested that you included your health as a block. I'd typically consider that a separate issue, though you're entirely correct in pointing out that it stops you from writing. And if the issue is fatigue, it can be harder to spot, making more inclined to think of it as writer's block.