Today, the dreaded writer's block has struck. It does not rear its ugly head so very often in my study, but today, my schedule stuffed full with a new book release (Olive of Groves), a pending book release in the United States (When Mischief Came to Town) and a deadline (book 3 in the Olive of Groves series) I have hit a little bump in the road. And yes, that little bump is a big fat euphemism!!
So what am I doing to overcome this heinous dose of writer’s block?
This is what I have done so far today:
1. I walked the dog and stopped to talk to every friend and acquaintance along the way. I even stopped to talk to one or two shrubs and a very pretty galah.
2. I prepared everything for tomorrow’s first two school visits for my rolling book launch - then double and triple checked it!
3. I cooked lunch for my family. I tried to talk them into a board game once the dishes were cleared away, but they saw straight through me. I lay on the lounge and talked to myself for ten minutes instead.
4. I checked my author page on Facebook and read a number of very entertaining posts from my Facebook friends, following internet trails further than I have ever followed them before. Were the internet a mountain range, I might almost have climbed Everest.
5. I updated my tax.
6. I made a pot of coffee and ate an entire marzipan bar which I had bought as a gift for my husband. He is Danish and loves marzipan. I do not. But desperate times call for desperate measures, as Hippocrates or Bugs Bunny once said.
7. I wrote a blog (this one).
And has it worked?
Of course not!
So what next?
The truth of the matter is that I need to sit down at my computer, call up the offending chapter and … just … start … writing.
How simple is that?
For my block is, I suspect, nothing more than an overblown dose of procrastination driven by a wave of exhaustion.
And I wanted it to be something exotic and intellectual! Oh my, how the truth hurts. But not as much as the indigestion that results from eating a bar of marzipan as big as a brick.