Where you're getting stuck

And two ways to get unstuck

I have been futzing with the first chapter of the new novel for a month now. Some of the delay can be attributed to my still getting to know the characters, testing what they can and cannot say, adjusting tone as their personalities became clearer, etc.

But I also made a tactical mistake.

Bref, I was so determined to make something fit that I lost momentum.

This new novel is based on a short story I wrote four years ago. When I reopened the document, I triaged what could be retained, what could be moved to another part of the story, and what was no longer relevant. Yay me!

As I wrote the new opening scene, I threaded in the old passages I wanted to keep. It was working for a while—and then it wasn’t. I (eventually) realized that I was forcing the new writing to fit around the old writing (instead of the other way around). As a result, everything sounded stilted and untrue to the characters.

If you’ve ever gotten stuck trying to make something fit, you know there are two options.

1. Reframe and rewrite

This is one culprit that had me going round-and-round for a few days:

I had my breakthrough when I boiled it down to the feeling I was trying to express. My narrator is trapped in an uncomfortable social interaction and she wants to appear cool and unbothered. In the previous iteration, she was bitchy, but this time around, she’s more awkward. That’s why the lead-up and follow-up to this passage sounded so wrong. I couldn’t trash the interaction entirely as it explains an integral part of her communication style, so I rewrote the old passage:

I had to pull the lens back in order to see what wasn’t working. My frame of reference had shifted from one draft to the next, and I had to understand the shift in order to make the writing move again.

2. Start over

If you haven’t already read this advice for writers, here it is: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Delete. Create a page at the very end of your document where you keep snippets just in case. Start a Substack where you immortalize those snippets. Just scrub it from the new document.

If you can write one great line, you will write others. Relax. Trust. Keep moving.

What are some other specific ways you have gotten stuck while writing?