Jeremy C Kester

I’ve had this story I’ve been trying to write for some time now called XY. To say that I’ve had trouble with it is an understatement. It’s been one of those I’ve struggled with causing this continued struggle with writer’s block. It’s only going to be a short story, so I should be capable of writing in first draft form pretty quick. Not a chance though. I’m roughly 2000 words in and the mud is now over the tires. I am stuck.

One thing I’ve been trying to avoid is junking the project as just one of those stories that just won’t work. Not only do I have a novel concept but a good pair of characters as well. I just can’t bring myself to let it go.

Stream of conscious writing on it, or just pushing through and writing something in place, and editing it all later hasn’t worked either. It feels more like spinning my tires. It all becomes gobbledy-gook very quick. Just junk writing.

There is a thing I’ve not done before, but it might work here. It’s a little bit of both of the above suggestions: throwing away the current draft and restarting it in its entirety. Keep the concept and the characters, but throw away the plot. Put them through something different. Doing so scares me a little. Throwing away what I wrote so far seems reckless, careless. But not getting through this story scares me even more than scrapping what I have.