Writer's Block Buster: 'Play-date' with my heroine brings fresh insights and inspiration

You know the classic cartoon meme of the hapless character who runs off the cliff, but only falls when he looks down, causing suspended gravity to kick in, splattering him on the canyon floor?

Do you ever get to a point in your first draft when, like that character, you're running along at breakneck speed, creating your fiction with blissful abandon? Then, two thirds of the way through, as the plot becomes ever more clear to you, you grind to a halt, over-analyzing and second guessing yourself ? You itch to edit edit edit, change course, look down, and suddenly you're stymied and blocked, lying splattered with bruised wings on the canyon floor?

That's what happened to me last week while scooting gleefully through the first draft of my second novel "Kittiwake and Cloudhover." My feisty heroine Thirza and my wildlife whispering hero Bram from "Goatsucker Harvest" find themselves hurtling towards the dizzying cliffs of Flamborough on the Holderness Coast, summer 1856. Suddenly, I found myself temporarily stuck in the wet sand, caught in a bind between my writing and editing brains.

So, I was inspired to try to find my own solution. Maybe you'll find this approach helpful, too. Maybe you have your own self-restart buttons to press? I'd love to hear about them!

I let myself skip off for a quick off-piste "play date" with my heroine, letting Thirza tell me, in her own inimitable voice, how she saw the plot, the other characters, from start to finish.

It gave my querulous inner critic the night off. 8000 words later, I had some useful fresh plot twists, insights and inspiration. I'd also been able to "kill" some of my floppier "darlings" plus some of Thirza's turns of phrase cried out for inclusion in future drafts.

So, with a clearer road map, a renewed purpose, rested and refreshed, it's a joy to put my hands back on the tiller and steer for the end of the first draft again.

I'm excited for the day in the future when I can share more of these crazy, cliffhanging emotional adventures with you!

Thanks for reading and for all your support, amazing reviews, laughs, and for sharing my writing journey!

Plots are...like live flamingo mallets

  

John Tenniel illustration, coloured by Fritz Kredel

The plot of my current short story keeps squirming around like the live flamingo mallets in that croquet game in "Alice in Wonderland". Very provoking, as Alice herself might have said.

This story began as a humorous short dealing with a young man coming to terms with the increasingly confused behaviour of an elderly relative. As I wrote on, the plot started subtly remoulding and contorting itself, like the flamingo's neck twisting to look Alice in the face with an expression of puzzlement.

The plot looked back quizzically into my own face and demanded  a detour into the undergrowth! The reassuring humour gradually leeched out in twists of more savage irony. Then the characters started to jockey for new positions within this adjusted panorama. I kept coming up to high hedges in the maze of my original idea and then turning to see a stunning new horizon for which I hadn't thought to pack a map, let alone sandwiches.

As I tried, like Alice, to adjust my grip so as to take control again, tucking the body of the plot firmly under my armpit with its legs hanging down, it would spring back into another attitude and skip off down an alleyway I hadn't foreseen.

Sitting back with a coffee at "half-time",  I replotted for some pace and drive within the new focus of the plot. I set off again, determined to finish before fluttering around editing my words, stalling and second guessing the finished story.

So far I've found the plot path has changed from springy turf and warm meanders round sunlit bends to a stark gothic stairwell falling away into a bleak gulley between terror and tenderness.

Flipping heck! I've just got to hunker down and finish it now; then lay it aside for a while until it's uncurled its tatty toenails for trimming and see how I can polish it till it bowls through the home hoop and into the reader's life.