Q: What happens when you hit writer’s block head on?
A: When I hit writer’s block head on, I usually realize that what I’m writing is boring. Not the entire story necessarily, but typically an event in that story, which is playing out too straightforwardly to spark my interest, a scene of transportation from one location to another, for example. I find that my writing surges when I’m describing something unusual, or depicting something commonplace from an uncommon angle. If I’m finding it hard to proceed, my go-to trick is to make it harder for myself. Rather than drive us to the new location from our protagonist’s perspective, I can hop into the perspective of a bird watching our hero drive through the narrow streets below, or from the point of view of the city beneath him, wincing as he steers his car through the folds of its asphalt brain. Sometimes the smoothest route towards what I want to accomplish is the more roundabout one.
Evan Marcroft’s story “Devilish Calliope and the Ungrooviest Apocalypse”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 14 August 2020.
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