Writer's block, background tracks, and tangled headphones
and how they're all connected in the strange place that is my brain
Fair warning
This post is a bit long and meandering, but I promise there’s a payoff. Well, there’s a payoff for me, your mileage may vary.
Before I get started on my topic, let me start with some quick updates. First off, I’m six weeks into publishing Silver Mystic on Wattpad, which means there are six chapters out. Once I’m done with the first book of the series, I’ll move to publishing twice a week. Anyway check it out if you feel like it.
Secondly, I’m planning out my future projects, and while I’m not sure if this actually matters to more than like three people right now, I thought I’d throw it out there anyway. Here’s the rough order:
Silver Mystic (completed)
Dream-Vision (in progress)
Silver Mystic sequel (working title: Silver Order)
High fantasy novel (working title: Hungry)
Silver Mystic prequel (working title: 1/101 or possibly Silver Origin)
Final novel (ominous, eh? working title: Fulfillment)
Why am I already planning this out so far in advance? Truthfully, items 2, 4, and 6 were already in my head when I began writing Silver Mystic, so I’m only adding a couple more. And ultimately, in my head my fiction is all connected, so I’m thinking about it all at once. More on that later.
Frustration
I began writing Dream-Vision on October 10th, 2020. I know this because I have a save file for every writing session I’ve had (this is true of SM as well). This has begun distressing me, because I’m over a year in, but only maybe a third of the way through the story. It took me two years to finish the first draft of SM, and it was a much longer story (sorry bout that btw). So I’ve been stressing about how I need to pick up the pace. I’m not writing enough. What if I just don’t care about this one as much as I cared about the last one? What if I never finish?
And then, without fail, I take a few deep breaths, and ask myself the worst case scenario. If I never finish another book, am I okay with that? Can I live satisfied? And the answer is always the same.
Yeah, actually.
I suppose some people might be surprised by that answer. It’s certainly not the most obviously motivating thing to take away the motivation to do a thing. But for me, for a variety of reasons (some of which I still do not understand), it works. When it comes to my career, or various projects, I thrive under pressure. Deadlines help me focus and cut away the scrap. Yet it works the opposite way for me with creative work. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but SM was the first novel I ever finished because I finally allowed myself to give up on it.
I suppose it’s about time for me to get around to the topic in the title. Writer’s block. I don’t really believe in it as such, or rather, I guess I do, but I think it’s immensely helpful. At least for me. I am not successful or wise enough to be prescribing advice, but in my experience, when I don’t feel compelled to write, it means I’m not ready to. Do I think this is the result of some kind of metaphysical muse? Or some romantic notion about inspiration? Not really. It’s just that my ideation process is a bit weird, I suppose. Let me explain.
Background tracks
You know how if you’re listening to a vinyl record, but there’s no music playing (in between a song, at the beginning/end of a record, etc.) but there’s still sound coming out of the speakers? Or back in the day, when TV programming actually ended, you’d end up on static or an unchanging image/tone. There are other examples, but what I’m getting at is the thing you perceive when the active broadcast is silent. I call that the background track.
This applies to my brain as well. When I’m not actively thinking about something, it doesn’t mean I stop thinking. There’s always some noise going on about something. This is my brain’s background track.
When I was a child and young adult, my background track was a never ending stream of anxiety. When I was driving to work or school, or otherwise relatively unoccupied, my brain defaulted to questioning why I was doing so poorly at everything I wanted to do, why I couldn’t find love, why I felt so alone, how was I going to pay the next bill, the list goes on. And I never really made progress on any of these things because I was too caught up in my own head. And I was caught up in my own head because I couldn’t make progress on these things.
Does that sound exhausting? Cuz it was.
Learning how to use my background track for good
But there was another thing my mind used the background track for sometimes. Daydreaming and wandering. I think, over time, as I learned to gradually let go of the things that made me anxious, to find contentment in the now and stop worrying so much about the future, my mind wandered more and more. Instead of circling a drain of worry, I started soaring to the strangest and most wonderful places. I’m sure those places I visited in my teens would make me cringe now, but at the time it felt liberating.
And as time went on, my mind wandered more and more, and often found itself dwelling on dreams I had had. Stories I wanted to write. And when I didn’t try to actively force myself to think about these things, it inevitably seemed to be the case that I did. Over time, I managed to be able to exert a little bit of control over my background track. Most times, if I simply let it be, it’ll just default to long trains of thought and randomish daydreaming. However, if I give it a little nudge, I can often set myself on a path to thinking about one of my stories. Once I do that, I just sort of let it go.
It must seem rather odd to be describing one’s own brain from a passive perspective, but that’s often how I think about it. I know that my brain is me, but I also tend to think about it as an external entity. And this helps separate me from my anxiety, but I digress. Well I guess I’ve been digressing for a while now, ya? Allow me to get to the point.
What were we talking about again?
Oh right, writer’s block. I don’t let writer’s block stress me out. Well I do, but then I smack myself and remind myself that I don’t think it’s real. Because I don’t really think of it like a block, so much as a tangle. I know all you fancy kids have bluetooth headphones nowadays, but I’m something of an luddite, so I still prefer wired headphones. And the worst part about wired headphones is that if you put them in a pocket for at least 1.5 seconds, they will become incredibly tangled.
This used to frustrate me, until I realized that if I just chilled out and slowly worked with the wires, they’d come untangled. As long as I didn’t stress out about the extra twelve seconds it took me to mess with them, then I found the process acceptable, even pleasing. I take this same approach with my brain when it comes to story.
Right now, I’m at a point in DV where I know what’s going to happen in general terms. I have a good idea of the end, and how to get there, but what I don’t know is specifics. There’s a side character I’m about to introduce, but she doesn’t feel real yet in my head. I can’t write her until she feels real. Is this writer’s block? No, it’s just a tangle. I’ve just got to give my brain some time to use my background track to untangle this next bit for the story. When I do that, things sort of just come together.
And inevitably, when I let this process happen organically, no matter how long it takes, I come away so satisfied with the result. And you know what? That’s my guiding light. Do I want y’all to be impressed? Engrossed? Of course, because one day I’d like my work to be compelling to a large audience. But what I care about more about is whether I find it compelling.
I guess to me, there’s an important, and often overlooked step between ingestion of new information and ideas, and producing my own creative work. That step is digestion, and in my experience, it’s difficult to force it along. It takes as much time as it takes, which can be frustrating, but like I said, rewarding too.
So you know, trust the process, try not to be too hard on yourself, and learn to enjoy untangling headphones. That’s my ethos. For now, anyway. If it changes, you can be sure I’ll write another needlessly long and wandering essay about it. I’m sure you’re excited.
Cheers,
Loren