#writer's block

I've been working on my writer's block. I really have. Progress is slow and brain is heavy and I'm not completely free of things I have to do. Perhaps one day I'll live a life the allows me to take a month to focus solely on writing, but it's not today, or tomorrow, or next year or the year after that. Keep on dreaming.

I've attacked the problem the same way I would a math problem — broke it down into tiny little manageable pieces. My writer's block comes mostly from fear. I fear the immensity of a novel, the mountain of work that has to be put into it. The research, the care, the fine tuning of the details, the sheer number of hours spent typing. I cannot fathom to do that right now, the brain power is depleted by other research I have to do for work, for money, for a career. So I scaled down the project. I will not write a novel. I will not write a novella. I will simply write a series of short short stories, about 1,000 words each. And once the puzzle pieces are created, then I'll look at them and see what can be assembled out of them.

I do need a project to focus on. An idea to work on a little bit everyday. I had to think hard and come with a structure that will not be scary in its scale and rigidity, but will be robust enough to guide me in the days when creativity will be a struggle. I liked the idea of a countdown. 30 days until an event. Perhaps make it 50 days. One short story of 1,000 words multiplied by 50 is 50,000 words and isn't that already a novella?

The idea being in its infancy, I don't want to talk too much about it here. I will someday, when I have written more consistently and feel more secure about it. All I will say for now is that I like science-fiction, I like complicated female characters, I like complicated friendships, I like the sinusoidal nature of the relationship between two people who are enemies in their careers but old friends in their personal lives, so I plan to include all of them. Two sides of the same coin, forever connected but seeing the world oh so very differently. The story of a shared life, told in bite size pieces, counting down the days until one of the people leaves forever.

I'm writing a novel, and have been since August 2024. I finished draft one in December 2026, fourteen months later. I wrote 35k words, and it was hard. I remember having to take breaks, having periods where I didn't know where to take the story, where writing one sentence in the draft felt like torture. On 1 April 2025, nine months in, I had written over 21.5k words and was in chapter eleven. Since starting draft two in January of this year (2026), I've written just over 8k in eight months, and that feels absolutely pitiful to me.

But then the part of me that is aggressively patient and kind, to me and my friends and the stranger in the other lane of traffic, grabs me by the shoulders and says, "Stop. Think. Why haven't you written as much? Give me an actual answer."

And then I do, and I remember that summer is the time where I work on my more tactile creativity: crochet, knitting, and drawing. It's the time where I explore more of who I am as a person, where I'm not sitting in classes or working most of the day and taking breaks to hash out a few sentences. I remember that I've been taking opportunities, traveling with my family, learning social skills that I missed when I was younger, bonding with my extended family, and developing interests new and old. I remember that summer is hard for me: a time of lower focus, a time of "hurry up and wait". A time where I'm just trying to vibe, rather than get things done.

Autumn is a time to reap what I sowed in the spring, to realize the plans I laid and reap the benefits of what I tried over the summer. Winter is a time to be cosy, to get things done slowly but surely to earlier dusks and later dawns. Spring is a time to wake up, to get excited, to bloom with all I've created. And summer is the time to let myself grow quietly, without fanfare, without pushing myself to do it in the daylight or late into the night.

my god it's like pulling teeth!!