Clawing out of the muddy middle
What to do when you get stuck in the muck of a project
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Last month I wrote about how to break through the kind of block that prevents you from even getting started. But what about when you’re stalled in the middle of a novel or memoir draft? What about when you’re 150 pages into a draft and a heat wave melts your brain and the news cycle goes atomic and the kids get out of school for the year and your paid work piles up and besides all that what you’d really rather do besides write is basically anything but especially jump into a swimming pool or maybe take a nap? What about then, huh, smart guy?
I’m going to give you three solid unsticking techniques in this newsletter, but first I want to acknowledge that sometimes a stuck draft isn’t about the draft itself. I’ve written about this before. I think about it a lot because it’s simply the truest truth: you can’t be really honest on the page unless you’re being honest in your life.
Maybe you can’t let your main character do what she wants to do because in the back of your mind, you’re worried your aunt/boss/husband/self will confuse the character with you and judge you. Maybe you’re afraid of what writing your most emotionally honest short story/essay/whatever will reveal about the inner workings of your mind and that they might be less palatable or pleasant than you what you tend to share in your everyday life. These are very real blockers, and it’s true that the best writing does reveal a lot — I don’t even mean factually (often “tell all” essays don’t reveal anything of substance beyond some titillating gossip), I mean more like emotionally, more like: the way you see the world.
It’s a little embarrassing to reveal this kind of thing, sure, but I happen to think it’s worth it. I happen to think there’s nothing like the experience of finding your own innermost, inarticulable thoughts clarified in someone else’s novel. But I thought I was the only one who felt this way! is, personally, my favorite response to get from readers.
Even better if we can push that vapor of recognition into another state of being — the solid matter (is this metaphor working?) of understanding, clarity, steps forward. I don’t mean that novels should be self-helpy or even have actionable takeaways; I just think they should say something real.
Okay so that said, here are a couple things to try:
Defamiliarize
Sometimes things are too close to see. You know this from life (enmeshed relationships, that counter clutter you don’t even notice anymore, etc), but it’s true in writing as well. Do whatever you can in order to see the book/project anew. Sometimes this looks like those classic revision tips: Change the font; read it out loud. People who worked with me in any capacity know I’m a huge fan of printing. Print that baby out, have it bound even! Anything you can do to make it seem a little different than the doc you’ve been squinting at for days/months/years.
How far can you take this? Can you try to read it as if you were your own ideal reader? What would she make of it? Does she have enough information to understand what’s happening? What would she want more of or less of? There comes a time in any draft when its author isn’t necessarily its most reliable reader. Luckily you’re a writer, and good at imagining what it’s like to be someone else, right?
Pitch it
Not like “throw it out” pitch it, jeez I’m not a monster! I mean like, pretend you’re pitching this book to an agent or publisher. (The brilliant
has suggested something like this in her incredibly useful Substack Before and After the Book Deal about using the logline as a revision tool, which obviously I love.) The idea here is to sum up your book or piece into a muscular one-or-maaaaybe-two line description. This description should have within it: the protagonist, the antagonist or antagonizing force, the main conflict, and some hint about what choice or challenge the protagonist will be faced with.Like, I guess the pitch of my novel Animal Instinct could be: A recently-divorced woman explores her sexuality, despite her ex-husband’s judgment and the complicating fact that there’s a global pandemic. Finding dating to be complicated, she decides to add to her roster of paramours a perfect person that she creates using AI — but in the end she’s going to have to learn to connect with actual people if she really wants to grow as a human. Or… something like that. I don’t actually think I did a great job there, but you get the idea. Note that this isn’t exactly what would go on the jacket copy — it reveals a little bit more than jacket copy usually does. It’s more like what you might put in an agent query letter. The emphasis here is not on making it snappy and clever, but on clarifying what the book is.
This exercise is a kind of a litmus test, because if you really can’t sum up your story — or the main questions/ideas of the story — into a sentence or two, it probably means the story isn’t crisp enough in your mind.
Like let’s say I’d said my book was about “a woman…and her feelings… in Brooklyn…” which, FWIW, is actually how I usually describe my writing in casual settings. That’s the theme of the book, the vibe of it. But if while writing this book, I only had a theme, ~a vibe~, I bet I would get stuck right in the middle of that novel draft. I wouldn’t have given this feelingsy woman much to do.
When I’m writing a novel, I have to give my protagonist secret desires, secret fears, a driving question, a problem — in other words, something to do, in order to keep the story moving. Hammering out pitch line, even if it feels a little inelegant or even reductive, can help you crystallize what’s at the heart of the story, and what is potentially missing.
Pitch it 2.0
Okay this time I really do mean throw it away. Haha gotcha.
I say this with love. Sometimes, we get so attached to the stuckness of a draft that it becomes a kind of armor. But we can’t all be Fran Lebowitz, luxuriating in an eternal writer’s block. (I mean, I guess we can, but do we want to?) And sometimes, there’s just too much that’s broken, too much to move around, too many holes in a draft.
I’ve recently had two different clients tell me this is what they had to do in their revisions of their books, and they’re in good company — it’s how Lauren Groff revises too! Start fresh, with a new document. You’ll only remember to include the good stuff. And the weight of everything else — all that character development, all that setting detail, all that backstory — will make itself felt in the new draft. It really will.
What’s more — there’s something incredibly freeing about starting over. Scary, but exciting. This is true in writing and hello in life as well!
Do you have other ways you’ve busted through a mid-draft block? Please share in the comments!
If you have a writing project that’s stuck and want to work together write to me here! I help writers through blocks, edit manuscripts of all lengths, review agent queries, and more. Now booking for late fall. ➰
Loglines are my love language. Thank you for the shout out!