Jenn's World

I don't usually get writer's block. I call it "writer's hesitation." I'm reluctant to write because I know something is wrong, and I'm afraid, by writing, I'll just make it worse.

John Brown calls this a gift because we knowing we need to stop, think and fix is better than progressing in ignorance. Usually I agree with him. Usually I can figure out what if I look at something closely enough. But this sense of wrongness has been growing for weeks and I can't figure it out. It's ssssooooooooooooooooo frustrating.

I thought my revisions would be done by now. But I'm 80,000 words in and stuck. I'm struggling with writing this emotional, painful scene. I'm struggling with trying to add dialogue tags that aren't melodramatic. I'm struggling to add new descriptions, new metaphors that I haven't used already. How do authors come up with new imagery book after book? How many sunsets and forests and river scenes can you write without them being repetitive, both intra-textually and inter-textually.

I'm struggling with the fact that I hate the book's ending, but I don't know how to make it better. ARGH!!! A little voice in my head says I need to have faith in myself and I'm just cranky because it's not my "original vision" which would have been 500,000 words, probably.

I'm struggling with the fact that my gut says I should cut out one of the main characters. But I really don't want to do it. I tell myself, I'll leave her in...at least until I get some beta readers to look at my book. Then we'll see.

But you know it's really bad when I start doing laundry. Doing laundry and cleaning my room to instead of writing? Talk about your pigs-ice-skating-in-hell scenarios.

It's probably a little bit my own life too. I need some new stimulation--read a new book, do something new, see something new. Maybe I just need to take a week off and think really hard about where I want this to go. And I'm still a little pissed at a girl who insulted me for wearing baggy jeans. I thought I was above the high school mentality, but there's something about the little, flippant "heh" that really pisses me off.

Meanwhile, I had an awesome dream for a Y.A. book called "My Own Personal Prince Charming." The concept's been done to death, but maybe I'll work on that next. The basic premise is a prince drops out of the sky in modern L.A. on top of a modern teenage girl who despises him for his boorishness and poor dental hygiene. After fighting off a bunch of bad guys, she learns that the boy next door is much better than some screwed-up fairy tale tall-dark-and-handsome. Though of course that doesn't stop her from saving his world.

Oddly enough, in my dream, it was the other way around. A princess from our time had to come to the magic fairy tale kingdom to keep it from collapsing, and when the prince learned about VCRs... he went happy-nuts. But the "princess" was patronizing him the whole time, accepting the living situation because she needed to escape from some mafia peoples.

Sometimes, I have the coolest dreams.