Writing, what else?

When I’m My characters out of time, in the first draft of Meld are stuck in a patch of mud and I ,part 2 of the Doomed series, as I am today, and don’t yet know how to write my characters them through that experience. I nowadays turn to another project.

Drat. The sentence above had 45 words as it stood. Why can’t I write long sentences in my fiction? (Editors and beta readers often complain.) But I guess I’d better unpack it in the interests of readability.

Yes, so I murdered my first first sentence. I’m limited showing you exactly what I did, not yet knowing all the possible ins and outs of what I can do here. The new first sentence reads …

My characters in the first draft of Meld are stuck in a patch of mud and I don’t yet know how to write them through that experience.

When I’m in that kind of situation, I don’t call it writer’s block. That story-stew is merely waiting for new ingredients. Because it was a time jump that got them into their present predicament, the characters need to have a ‘where-are-we-in-space-and-time’ discussion while at the same time protecting themselves from the wild life. I need to research all the ways in which they can discover ‘when’ they are.

In the meantime it’s OK to write a blog post, work on a short story, or even re-organize your media collection so it can be housed on the internal hard drive. It’s all part of writing.