Dark Night of the Soul is a good way of putting it. I've been going through that myself. It began when I became finally disenchanted with the state of the publishing industry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to self-publish. But I came to realize that the publishing industry I was trying to break into had died twenty years before. Equally, over those twenty years, self-publishing had moved from being simply a form of vanity press to being a form of rebellion. So I did what I hope was the rebellions thing, rather than the vain thing, and published the four finished books I had on hand. I felt at the time that I had too much finished work clogging up my mental workshop and that once it was cleared out, it would make room for new work. That didn't really happen. I brought out the four books, making a complete hash of the marketing, but new work did not come. Then my sister died in January, a reminder, apart from anything else, that all our projects are subject to abrupt cancellation at a time not our choosing. It is only in the last month that I have done any serious or substantial fiction writing again. It is a different book, set in a different time period, and what I shall do about publication, once it is finished, is something I an honestly conflicted about. In the meantime, thought, I have made my complaint about the current state of publishing, and now it is probably time to move on from it.
Thanks for this post, and thank you for launching what turned out to be an interesting conversation. I'm sorry to hear you've hit a lull with your writing but that happens to every writer I think. (I'm in a bit of a lull at the moment myself and I'm pretty sure we'll both get over it.) It's just my opinion but "memorizing...scrutinizing...taking in videos and podcasts...conferences...analyzing chapters, etc." might be slightly useful in small doses, but too much research can be stifling. At least I find it so. Joan Didion said, "I write to find out what I think." She was a journalist, but I think that idea resonates with fiction just as much. Writing fiction involves sensations and ideas that are part of the inner life we carry with us. My fiction's fueled by daydreams that, if I never wrote them down, would waft away like smoke. For me the thing is to write as much as I have time to. When I can't seem to write, the sorts of research you mentioned might be a nice distraction but not much more. Reading's important though. Reading, "classic OR modern," is like P.E. class for the scrawny language centers of my weak and feeble brain.
Dark Night of the Soul is a good way of putting it. I've been going through that myself. It began when I became finally disenchanted with the state of the publishing industry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to self-publish. But I came to realize that the publishing industry I was trying to break into had died twenty years before. Equally, over those twenty years, self-publishing had moved from being simply a form of vanity press to being a form of rebellion. So I did what I hope was the rebellions thing, rather than the vain thing, and published the four finished books I had on hand. I felt at the time that I had too much finished work clogging up my mental workshop and that once it was cleared out, it would make room for new work. That didn't really happen. I brought out the four books, making a complete hash of the marketing, but new work did not come. Then my sister died in January, a reminder, apart from anything else, that all our projects are subject to abrupt cancellation at a time not our choosing. It is only in the last month that I have done any serious or substantial fiction writing again. It is a different book, set in a different time period, and what I shall do about publication, once it is finished, is something I an honestly conflicted about. In the meantime, thought, I have made my complaint about the current state of publishing, and now it is probably time to move on from it.
Thanks for this post, and thank you for launching what turned out to be an interesting conversation. I'm sorry to hear you've hit a lull with your writing but that happens to every writer I think. (I'm in a bit of a lull at the moment myself and I'm pretty sure we'll both get over it.) It's just my opinion but "memorizing...scrutinizing...taking in videos and podcasts...conferences...analyzing chapters, etc." might be slightly useful in small doses, but too much research can be stifling. At least I find it so. Joan Didion said, "I write to find out what I think." She was a journalist, but I think that idea resonates with fiction just as much. Writing fiction involves sensations and ideas that are part of the inner life we carry with us. My fiction's fueled by daydreams that, if I never wrote them down, would waft away like smoke. For me the thing is to write as much as I have time to. When I can't seem to write, the sorts of research you mentioned might be a nice distraction but not much more. Reading's important though. Reading, "classic OR modern," is like P.E. class for the scrawny language centers of my weak and feeble brain.