Taking time on another project often gives one the cognitive distance they need to figure out what’s blocking the first.

Of course sometimes the blockage can’t be avoided, either. I all but stopped writing a few years ago when I realized that a story I had started (and that was deeply personal) but never finished had blocked off all creative avenues for me. It took me nearly a year to come to grips with–and complete–the memoir that had dammed the flow.

Slow is good, sometimes.

Its just that I’ve been on the brink of giving up on my current project for a week or so – wondering if it was worth the time and effort because it seemed to be going nowhere. I haven’t been working on it for more than a few months, but the progress is so slow that at times I’ve wondered if I was even cut out for this sort of thing. Plus I have to ask myself if its better to give voice to my creative vision, or spend more time with my family, which I don’t do enough of anyway. That’s not an absolutely faithful dilemma because if I write, it’s usually on the train to work, but I could use that time for other things that would free up more at-home time. Everything just piles up, you know? I’ve been at that place that asks whether I even want to try anymore.

Your post gave me confidence that slowness – even occasional periods of stagnation like my current one – are not only OK but are experienced by people who I admire, like you. In case you’re wondering, I haven’t read anything of yours other than you blog posts and comments, but I admire your thoughtfulness and the way you express it. I admire your voice.

Plus, you reinforced my wife’s advice, which was that I switch my focus to a different project that is more exciting, but that I’ve been avoiding because of its complexity.

So you’ve basically helped to revive my creative spirit in a way that I wasn’t able to do. I was running out of energy to try. Thanks again.

Glad that what I said resonated in some way for you.

Can I ask what part was particularly helpful, and why? (Kind of an “I’ve shown everyone mine, now I wanna see everyone else’s” syndrome, I guess.)

Absolutely. Great follow up comment — I say blather on.

For me, one of the interesting–possibly telling–things about different literary genres and styles is exactly what constitutes the “ornaments” of the genre. In fantasy, it’s often high-quality, interesting worldbuilding. In science fiction, it can be the ideas.

One of the criticisms that was made of Tolkien as a writer was that he wasn’t terribly literary, on a phrase- and sentence-level. Not enough striking images and mots justes (is that how I’d pluralize that)? Indeed, one of the silliest published critical essays I’ve ever read had, as its premise, the notion that Lord of the Rings, while a very nicely written book, wasn’t actually “literature” because it didn’t have what Our Sort look for in literature.

The irony, of course, is that Tolkien was indeed a very stylistically sensitive writer–just in ways that weren’t in style among the literati at the time. Still, though, the point I’d make is that “ornaments” as I’m defining them in my metaphor don’t have to reside at the sentence-level or consist of flowers of rhetoric. An interesting character, a striking bit of worldbuilding, a magnificent irony–any of these can be an “ornament” as I’m thinking of them.

Which leads to an interesting question. In deliberately postmodern works that experiment with story structure, is the structure itself the ornament? Sometimes I think it can be.

“Writing method is an interesting problem, and while it might be a cop-out, I have to say that everyone is different and each of us has to find our own way–and accept that different pieces often gestate differently.”

To which I say: Yes. Probably the single most interesting thing to me, watching myself as I write, has been discovering that a lot of what I *thought* would be true about my writing often isn’t.

A big part of it’s the psychological aspect. You do what you have to in order to keep yourself writing.

Writing method is an interesting problem, and while it might be a cop-out, I have to say that everyone is different and each of us has to find our own way–and accept that different pieces often gestate differently.

I tend to be a high word-count writer. I try to get the frame of an idea down quickly, the refine the structure and add the ornamentation on a set of subsequent passes. That works for me because I have no scruple about deleting very large blocks of text, or reworking what I have until it’s unrecognizable from a first draft.

In other words, I’m a rapid iterator. When I slow down, my prose gets muddy and overwrought and my ideas become too carefully constructed and feel artificial despite their honest origins.

A good friend of mine (a better writer in all possible ways) finds that once the sentence is written he becomes bored with in and he finds rewriting to be excruciating. He takes the time to write each sentence correctly before moving on.

I produce more work, but my friend has more quality sales. I’m not sure what lesson is to be learned there except that I have less of a core self to present, and so some sorts of stylistic refinement are simply impossible for me to see.

I simply don’t have some of the kinds of problems Jonathan mentions–needing questions about details answered before writing the scene, for example. I write the narrative nut in order to refine the questions I need to research, then move on.

Then again, I have never been accused of art, so perhaps what I’m describing here is less about method than intent. I love exquisite ornmentation, but I admire a well-shaped tree just as much and see the ornament as revealing the core in the kind of literature that most draws me.

I have to hope that sheer word count can eventually produce a masterpiece (with apologies to the thousand monkeys), because if innate brilliance or vision is required, I’m in deep, deep trouble.

See, if the economy collapses and you lose your job and you have to use your Christmas tree for firewood too keep from freezing to death, you will be awfully angry when you take off the ornaments and see that all you’ve got is a tumbleweed.