There are some days when I delay working on my writing, putting it off for hours before finally opening up my manuscript. Sometimes I feel as if I don’t have anything exciting to write. Other times I’m not in the mood to write the next scene, or I fear it will take too much out of me emotionally. After work, by the time I get to my computer I might be so tired I can barely think straight.
But what I’ve noticed lately is that often these are the writing sessions where I produce the most surprising work. Take last night as an example. I thought I was going to write the next scene in the book, which involves the heroine trying to get through a somewhat sticky situation. Part of me, however, knew that it had been too long since I’d addressed the heroine’s internal conflict. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that what I wrote was a scene where the heroine struggles with an internal flaw and debates how much of her vulnerability she wants to reveal to the hero.
Instead of the couple hundred words I thought I’d be able to write based on my mood and my level of tiredness, I got slightly over 1,000 words. That's roughly four pages. My fingers flew over the keyboard. I had tapped into the emotional core of the heroine and it felt wonderful.
So I’ve started paying more attention to the moments when I feel as if I don’t have anything to give to the page. Sometimes I honestly do need to delay a bit so that my subconscious can work out the next plot point or key emotional scene. Doing housework or taking a walk are good for helping that process along. Something about physical activity stimulates my creativity.
Other times, I need to trust myself and just start writing. Because experience shows that the words that come out are rarely as bad as I fear they’ll be.
What about you? What areas of your life do you experience resistance to?
