Getting Unstuck… Again

Your characters don’t behave like they should, your structure doesn’t flow yet, something is off in your character dialogue, …

Ahhh, writers’ problems. We know them all.

Maybe you’ve been working on a story over and over and over, and you just feel that some elements are not yet right. Yet, the more you work on it the more you stress out and you feel you’re writing yourself into a corner, until finally you declare yourself…

STUCK!!

Relax, breathe. You’re not stuck. You’ve just been on the story for so long that you can’t see it with distance anymore.

Put it aside. Let it be for some time.

Let go.

Do something else. For an hour, a day, a week, a month. Take some time off, spend time with your friends, travel if you can, or at least go for a walk. Spend time with your kids. Go to a spa, do sports. Work on something else.

During that time, all of a sudden you might just have the creative breakthrough you need.

Might be that a person at a supermarket behaves in a way that triggers an idea, might be a place where you haven’t been to for a while, a friend who says a line, a piece of music that you hear…

Allow your mind to wander off and not think about the story for a while.

You might even work on another project meanwhile and that could give you the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for.

Then, after some time, go back to that project and see it with fresh eyes.

Letting go of things is as important as doing the work.

How to learn to let go?