In The Flow of Time – August 15, 2025
This isn’t about the story, it’s about barriers to writing. Over many years and many chapters, I have discovered two that remain constant: getting started, and perfection. I really am almost never seriously blocked. But that’s because I am way too familiar with both these problems, they are old “friends.”
The extraordinarily trite trope of the writer staring at the blank page, wondering how to start, turns out to be real. 🙂 I write “episodic” chapters, months or even years apart, and I try to make each of them like a little short story – referencing all that comes before, setting up what comes next, but self contained.
I usually have an “info” file for the chapter with ideas, points I want to make, what the weather was like, a view of the sky, a map, whatever. All the background, and some of the foreground, the output of my research. This helps a great deal with “and where do I start?”
When I’m happy with getting all that down, I create a new file in parallel, the real chapter. And then I stare at the blank page. Sometimes it’s pretty easy, but a lot of times it’s… well there it is.
I change POV sometimes, from chapter to chapter. So one of my rules is, the person we’re seeing through, her name should be in the first sentence, if not the very first word. That usually helps. OK, where are we. Where is he/she, what are they seeing, feeling, doing… Sounds easy, sometimes it’s not.
I need to get at least a start on the first couple of sentences, and then I’m OK. Oftentimes I agonize over that opening, get something down, and when I do I walk away until tomorrow. Because I’ve got it started. I know the rest will follow, I can put it down and come back.
But then we run into barrier #2, perfection. This problem applies to those very first two sentences, but also to the chapter as a whole. By glory goddam it’s supposed to be RIGHT! First time, every time. Again and again I must stifle that desire and just spit out the crap floating around in my head. It is crap. As Jessi says, “If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing badly.” I want perfect words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs to just flow out of my fingers. That. Never. Happens. Never for a chapter. Almost never for a sentence. Every now and then a spectacular phrase or thought appears whole and intact. It’s pretty rare, and totally fucking awesome when it happens.
What is common, as in every day I write, I remind myself, just vomit up whatever. Editing is easier than writing. So vomit I must, and ultimately I do, against my heart’s desire for perfection. Then I read, rewrite, tweak, move, edit, reform, reword, go back to the start, do it all over. Again. And again. And again. A chapter, in bits and pieces, is probably read a dozen times on the way to, “OK, I’m happy with that.” Then it goes to my darling first reader, and my writer friends, for further annealing.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. If you follow the directions, you never escape.
