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Working through Avoidance



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Thu Dec 12, 2013 3:20 am
BluesClues says...



Okay, this is going to sound really silly, probably.

I apologize because I'm going to give you some backstory before I get to my actual question.

In the aftermath of Nanowrimo this year, I've actually been doing pretty well. I've been working further on the story I wrote--I reached 50,000 words during Nano, but the story isn't done yet.

I've been really depressed since July because my grandpa died, like I actually stopped writing for a while and it wasn't until Nano that I really got back into it. So I'm working on this story and my goal is to have it finished by the end of this month.

But here's my problem: The closer I get to the climax, the more I find ways to avoid writing it. I mean, I think part of it might be that I don't know quite how that's going to go down, but that's never stopped me before. It's more like--okay, for the first time EVER I skipped ahead to write my ending, and every time I sit down to write I go tweak my ending instead of working on the part leading up to it. Or I recently decided to kill off a character, which might make the story more interesting and unpredictable, but it's forcing me to rewrite earlier parts to account for the death, since originally the death wasn't going to happen until almost the end of the story.

And I'm actually starting to wonder if the only reason I decided to kill this guy off so early was so I would have something to work on other than the climax and the part leading up to it.

It's driving me insane. This has never happened to me before.

Does anyone else ever have this problem? And if so, how did you handle it?

Muchos gracias, amigos.
  





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Thu Dec 12, 2013 4:12 am
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Rosendorn says...



For me what happened with that was I felt woefully unprepared emotionally for the climax of the story. I felt like it was just too much, too far out of my scope, or me to do it justice. So I avoided it.

The fact you've been out of writing for awhile and have been struggling with depression makes me think there's some sort of emotional block to the climax itself. If it hits close to home, then it's understandable you'd want to avoid it.

What I'd suggest is to figure out what in particular you're trying to avoid. If it's because you don't feel good enough, or have a particular emotion attached to the scene, you'll have to deal with that before you can really get into the scene. At least, that's my experience.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  








The words you speak become the house you live in.
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