8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: writers block

  • Resolved to Plot

    Almost two years ago now I was deep into writing a novel.

    It was not my first.

    It would not be my last.

    But yet here I sit not having finished writing it. 

    Sure, I made a plan. I sketched out the plot. And I got it about ninety percent of the way to completion, but then…?

    Then I hit a wall.

    Every morning, literally every morning, I wake up and feel guilty that I didn’t write another chapter in that novel the day before. Every morning, literally every morning, I wake up and part of me ponders if today will be the day that fact changes.

    So far, no.

    At the start of 2026 I resolved that just pining about standing in front of a metaphorical brick wall, a wall that I didn’t know how to climb over, or around or through was not the right approach either.

    Instead, I started a new novel.

    No. I haven’t quit the other one, rather I just need some more time to stare at that original brick wall and figure it out. But just staring at it wasn’t helping anything either. 

    Each day I get another day further from my last effort on that story, but it is not forgotten.

    And one day I’ll wake up, ponder if today, that day, will be the day… and I will be right.

  • Smouldering Plots

    It’s difficult to start a story, and it’s difficult to end a story… but somehow worse than both of those parts there is a hump I have found that occurs somewhere in the middle.

    I have been writing a new novel and I am at the point where I need to move from the start, the inciting action where all the characters are introduced and dive into the middle, the guts of the story where all the action and the bulk of the story is going to happen.

    I did all this work on planning out a plot.

    I did all this work creating characters.

    I did all this work lighting the fire to make it all start.

    And whilst I did think a lot about how the flames were meant to keep smouldering for the next couple hundred pages of real story, getting over that hump between the start and the middle, and putting it down into actual words on an actual page is turning out to be a bigger chore than I anticipated.

    If you have been reading my meandering thoughts you know that I generally keep smouldering. I just push through and write my five hundred words each day, and (practically speaking) that’s how it goes down.

    But the effort, the mental churn, the fight to keep going is different now that I’ve moved into middle where the real plot and real works takes more than just a big idea.

  • Doing Time

    Writers block is not myth but I am starting to think it is often a symptom of a larger issue.

    I don’t think that struggling to put words on the screen is an issue of having nothing to say, I think it is more often an issue of having too much to say… and not having anything driving one to say it.

    No timeline. No urgency. No pressure. 

    There you are, just a guy in front of a keyboard waiting for inspiration to strike?

    I have found more and more over the last couple years that as I sit down to write my 500 words of fiction each weekday that one thing has been driving my production of that volume of words: writing to a deadline has helped me overcome so many instances of block. 

    Maybe it was knowing that I need to get words in while my coffee was still hot. Or perhaps it was knowing that I had somewhere else to be in a couple hours. Could be it was knowing that I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable time. But all of it also knowing that I had a quota to meet before any of those things.

    All other concerns got pushed to the side to meet the deadline. I was doing time, writing words, and breaking blocks.