“As soon as you connect with your true subject, you will write.”
- Joyce Carol Oates
Have you found that this is true? I’m in that spot now. I’ve got quite a bit of a novel wrote, but I feel like the heart of it is missing. I guess I’m looking for my true subject.
I feel like I have a lot of good words, but it just won’t quite come alive for me. What do you do when you’re in that spot? To me its different than writer’s block in the fact that I can write and know where the writing is going. I just feel like I’m missing a main ingredient. Its like leaving the yeast out of bread. It doesn’t rise in the way its suppose to.
Hi Mary Garcia. I think I know what you mean. For me, this feeling (or one like it) comes when the plot has already revealed all of its wonderful surprises, so that there is little left to discover in that aspect of the writing, but still some dimension is missing from the characters to make them come alive, and yet working out the problem of giving life and urgency to the work is a bit tedious. It’s a standstill not because I’ve run out of ideas, but because there is no joy in the project.
Hi Diane. That’s probably most of it. Thanks for nailing it down. Its frustrating. This is a character that I’ve used before and for some reason he just isn’t coming alive in the same way for this storyline. He was fantastic in the last novel I put him in. I don’t know why I can’t get him involved in the same way in this one. I just need to find his heart in this matter.
BTW you asked me to tell you how the snowflake method worked out for me. This is the one where I’m using it. It works great for the plotting. Its just the next layer that I’m having trouble with.
I like the description of the snowflake method. It seems like it would be very useful with plotting. But it’s going to be a while before I start my second novel, since I want to be done with the current one first.