Writer’s Shop Talk: Coping with Writer’s Block Between Scenes

Early Afternoon, Wednesday, December 4, 2024, Miami, Florida

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Hi, there, Constant Readers.

I usually pen my blog posts between 9:30 and 10:30 AM to get them on WordPress before lunch. Today, however, I’m fashionably late; woke up at 4:30 AM for a bathroom break and couldn’t get back to sleep. Eventually, I dozed off again, but by the time I was up for good, it was nearly 9 AM. So here I am, starting my writing day at a time that would make any respectable rooster scoff.

Yesterday was a mixed bag for me on the writing front. I wrote and published my blog post – an after-action report of a mission in Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age in the style of a news article – at a decent enough time, but when I returned to my writing desk after lunch, my well of ideas for Reunion: Coda was dry.

I learned last year that it’s a bad idea – at least for me – to pry new scenes for my novel out of my subconscious like Jack Bauer interrogating a potential terrorist in 24. There is a lot to be said about being persistent when you’re working on a passion project – and Reunion: Coda has turned out to be one of those – but sometimes it’s counterproductive to sit in front of my computer, staring at the blank page in front of me, and feel nothing but existential angst when the words won’t flow from my little gray cells down to my fingers, then on to the keyboard and the glowing monitor. As Stephen King once said, writing isn’t about making money or getting famous; it’s about enriching the lives of those who read your work and your own life as well. So when the well runs dry, maybe it’s time to take a break, recharge, and let the words come naturally. After all, you’re not Jack Bauer, and your muse is not a terrorist.

Naval Battles and Writer’s Block: Navigating the Seas of Creativity

Reluctantly, I gave up trying to immerse myself in the early 2000s world of my character Jim Garraty. Instead, I replayed the “Hair-Trigger” scenario from Sea Power’s Jane’s Redux mod with mixed results. I shot down three Soviet Tu-22M Backfires before they could launch their anti-ship missiles at the Nimitz carrier battlegroup in the eastern Mediterranean, sank a Soviet AGI (spy ship) with Harpoon missiles, and evaded enemy torpedoes fired by a Soviet diesel “H-K” sub. However, I also shot down a civilian airliner due to fog of war issues and sank two Soviet civilian fishing trawlers operating perilously close to the military AGI. The novelist in me thinks the Red Navy used those trawlers either as decoys or as props for a propaganda campaign against the U.S. Navy, mainly because the AGI is from the same ship class as the civvies.

Although I had no fresh ideas for my passion project, I still needed to write something, so I drafted another after-action report about this specific scenario, this time as a U.S. Navy press release, and posted it as a rare bonus blog post.

(Objectively speaking, I doubt that an actual Navy press release would be as candid about naval operations, especially if errors in judgment or other factors resulted in the deaths of innocents, but I think I told a compelling account based on a gaming session where I scored a Pyrrhic victory.)

Action This Day: Crossed Fingers, Hopeful Heart

As for today, I’m eager to dive back into Reunion: Coda after my afternoon break. The weather might be a bit cool for South Florida, but it’s perfect for getting cozy with my manuscript. I’m crossing my fingers for some creative magic to happen and bring Jim Garraty’s world to life once more. Here’s to hoping the words will flow as freely as the Coke I’m about to drink!