What Caused My Year-Long Writer's Block (And How I Obliterated It)

 I finished writing The 50,000th Stair just over a year ago.  At 145k words, it was my longest book to date, and I had written it in under two years--about double my normal writing rate.

As a writer, I'm a long-distance sprinter, and I almost always take 6+ months off between books.  The thing was, though, I wanted to keep writing.  I knew in detail one of the scenarios for book 3 and a significant amount of about half of the rest of the book.  I felt like I ought to be ready, but my brain was desiccated, and even when I tried to write, nothing good emerged. 

During this time, I went through various life changes.  For part of it, I was busy and happy but had a lot of time off; for part of it, I was drudging and unhappy and had every second devoured.  It didn't matter: the creative juices didn't flow.

Now, the #1 way of conquering writer's block that I've traditionally found is read more.  But no book seemed to interest me.  I found myself increasingly spending more time on my phone, especially watching YouTube videos of varying degrees of value.

Then, about a month ago, something happened.  I was thinking about eating a food and wondered if it would be bad for me.  My immediate response was to pull out my phone to ask Google, but I was in a place with no service, and I thought --

What am I doing?  Why am I asking the internet if this food is bad for me?  It's full of sugar and oil.  If I think about it for two seconds, I know it's bad for me.  In fact, why do I need to immediately look up the answer to any question that flashes past my brain?  Especially as the result of looking it up is that I stop thinking about the question.  

In short: more googling = less thinking.

Uh, oh, I thought.  How has this crept so out of control?  So I pulled up Focus mode on my phone and set it so that all internet browsers + YouTube are blocked all day.  The only time they're unblocked is 5pm-8pm.

The difference was vast and immediate.  Instead of YouTube garbage, I started listening to a superb audiobook of Nicholas Nickelby while I did housework.  Every morning at breakfast, with no other entertainment, I found myself picking up notebook and pen and writing for an hour and a half while listening to music.  Once my brain was no longer so stupid it couldn't understand them, I began enjoying books again.  At first, I was actively using my phone for stuff between 5 and 8pm; but after a couple of weeks, I found it no longer interested me. 

There's been increasing research out there about how the way we use our phones is making us (and our children) stupider.  It certainly made me stupider.  It may be making you stupider.

If you're having any writer's block, I highly recommend my experiment: block your phone for a few weeks, and regain your brain.

Rereading The Lord of the Rings After Many Years

 It's funny, but I haven't actually read The Lord of the Rings for more than a decade now.  I've started to read it several times, and gotten through the prologue, which I quite enjoy.  But somehow, I'm either in the mood for some lore or for a story, and I never get any further.  Or maybe it's that I didn't like my copy.

But my brother-in-law is finally reading the books for the first time, and so I decided: all right, here it is.  And so I started . . . 

At Chapter 1.  Having skipped the Prologue.

Old Obsessions Are Still Possessions (to quote my sister):

Travesty, I know.  Or maybe I know and you don't, so let me give my credentials.  

I was in middle school when the first movie came out, and so I read the books first, which set me up to dislike the movies.  Ii started out my time on the internet on tolkienonline, where I was, for the first and last time in my life, a Big Deal on a forum and story-based website.  People recognized my username.  I wrote a popular (and very ridiculous) fan fiction and collaborated on a larger story with many others.  I read and commented on Every Single Story that was posted.  It was my place, my home . . . until it started changing (it has a new name now and is unrecognizable) and I fell off.  But still, it was my first online-based obsession.  

And on top of that, I have played The Lord of the Rings Online MMORPG since beta.  And that game is made by the most obsessive fans who have ever obsessed.  I'm not kidding when I say I know obscure lore and have the maps imprinted on my brain.  

And yet . . . and yet . . . I've only read the Silmarillion all the way through once, The Children of Hurin Twice, The Tolkien Reader four or five times . . . and I've never read the histories.  I memorized some words in the Black Speech but hardly any of the geneologies and only two of Tolkien's poems.  Which I know some would say makes me a fake fan.  :)

Starting Without the Prologue

So anyway, I did the unthinkable and skipped the Prologue.  I'm now about 100 pages in; we're just reaching Woodhall.  And I love it.  I love that cold start, right into some magnificent storytelling.  (And somehow, through all the slogging through histories, I forgot that Tolkien is just a really good, compelling writer with a lot of sly wit and frankly easy prose.)  Beyond that, reading is so refreshing.  It says to me: "This.  This is what truly good writing looks like.  This is what no-question-but-it's-five-stars writing looks like.  How have you forgotten?"  But it seems, reading it, that there were several details I forgot -- even as, on a deeper level, far more details spring to memory.

Thinking of Fellowship as having been published much later than The Hobbit

If I'd grown up having obsessed over the Hobbit, it would've been devastating to me to see Bilbo so old.  I did read The Hobbit first (or my fifth grade teacher read it aloud), but only two years before; and though I liked it, I wasn't madly in love with it.  But imagine if I had loved Bilbo so deeply, only to see him so old, so tired . . . 

But as is, for me, The Lord of the Rings stands out more; and so I see The Hobbit more as a prequel; and so I am not sad to see old Bilbo but happy to see young Bilbo when I read that book.

It's Just a Start

As I said, I'm only 20% of the way into the first book.  I've barely dipped my toe in.  And yet, how striking . . .

I'll post further if I have further reflections.

A Spoiler-Filled Rant on Undertale

. . . that probably won’t make sense unless you’ve played the game and might disagree with you if you have.  But here I am anyway.  If you haven’t played the game, I do recommend it.

So, for Christmas, a friend gave me Undertale, which I had heard of but not played.  I knew a few things but not that much—mainly that there were different paths based on whom you decided to kill or spare.  I should mention that I have played fairly few video games in my life, though I sometimes watch Let’s Plays, and therefore am fairly slow; it took me about 10 hours to finish the game.

Knowing what small spoilers I did, I thought about how I wanted to play the game, and decided to try not to let my knowledge influence me.  It came to me very quickly that I would play as follows: kill only those characters I found it absolutely necessary to kill and do my absolute best to spare everyone else.

 

TORIEL

The first monster I killed was this psycho kidnapper who imprisoned me in her home and decided to make me her child against my will; then, when I tried to escape, dragged me back again and again before finally violently attacking me.  Aside from the fact of kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment, it became clear to me that the only way I’d ever be safe from her was to defeat her.

After that, I didn’t kill any monsters.  I went way out of my way to be merciful and spare them.  The only time I slipped up was once monster that attacked me.  I tried to spare it, but it refused, so I hit back . . . and hit way harder than I expected, since I didn’t fully understand the fight mechanics.  It died by accident.  A pity, but since it had attacked me first and I’d done my best to spare it, I wasn’t too broken up.

 

UNDYNE

The next monster I killed was this psycho stalker who followed me halfway across the world, repeatedly attempting to murder me.  I offered to spare her, to talk with her, anything—and she refused.  She screamed at me again and again that she was going to murder me and use my soul to open a portal to the human world, where she would murder all humans.  (And she dared call me a murderer!)  Se refused to back down, but I wasn't about to let her murder not only me but all humans.  I therefore fought back and I killed her.*

(*The game went all sad-music and then silence, as if I should be sorry for what I’d done; as if I’d been ruthless.  You know, because it was so wrong of me to prevent the monster who’d hunted me across the world from murdering all of humanity. . .)

There were three more encounters, over the course of the game, in which monsters attacked me and I couldn’t figure out how to save them, and who died while I was trying to get them to accept mercy or at least let me run away.  One of these encounters was the royal guards, so there were two of them.  My overall kill count was now up to six: four by accident, in defending myself, and two on purpose, out of reasonable necessity.

 

ASGORE

I then encountered the king, the one who had ordered everyone in his land to murder me in order to further his plans of genocide—for which plan he had already murdered six children.  To quote the king’s exact dialogue: “I said that I would destroy any human that came here.  I would use their souls to become godlike… Then, I would destroy humanity...”

(**The wiki says he plans “to kill seven humans and use their SOULs to break the barrier that traps everyone Underground. However, he is not evil or malicious” . . . Did whoever write the second sentence bother to read the first?)

I wished to accuse him of his crimes, of the deaths of the children and of the deaths of his own citizens (who had only died because he'd ordered them to murder me.  And . . . the game wouldn’t let me accuse him.  Instead, it made me listen to this child-murdering genocide-plotter give a long whiny speech about how it wasn’t his fault he murdered children.  He didn't want to do it; he didn't like it.  He just had to, y'see?

You are king.  You are king.  How dare you not want to dirty your own hands.  I guess it’s easy to order murder when you don’t have to do it yourself!  But it is your responsibility.  You evil murderer, how dare you!

Then the king attacked me, and I defeated him but didn't yet kill him.  As he lay wounded, he gave another whiney speech about how, really, he wasn’t a bad guy; he just murdered all those people because he wanted to give his people hope, but now doing that was too much bother (how tiresome child-murder and genocide had become!) and all he wanted was to go have a nicer life, so how about I just do what I like and leave him alone?  

How unbelievably selfish, capricious, and evil can you get?  But beyond that: what would happen if I did leave, and left you in charge, you murderer?  Of all the monsters I have met, it is you above all who deserve the name “monster”!  

And so, rather than let the king continue to do what he pleased, I killed him, determined to take his place as king: to rule the monsters as they should be ruled, to protect them without resorting to the evil methods of my predecessor.***  And without taking the monsters to the land of the humans, where their peaceful society would have been shattered into bloodshed.  Maybe someday, in small pieces, when the time was right.  But for now, when the monster society was peaceful and the king's prejudice strong and it had been established the monsters would easily be wiped out?  No.  I would bring about a fruitful society where we were.

(***But did the game allow this?  No, it crashed, made me fight a flower, and then had my character leave for the world of the humans, saying a robot was now king.  But that was not my choice.  My choice was not to leave.  My choice was to take responsibility and act as a king should act.)

 

I AM FRUSTRATED.

The story of the game accuses me of being a murderer and has all sorts of sad music for the actual murderers when they die.  It says—you must be a pacifist (but everyone else can be a murderer) or you’re just the worst!

Ultimately . . . this game, which is full of seeming choice, did not give me the choices I wanted: to accuse the king and to rule in his place.  (And yes, I’d have been allowed to rule in that society.  Apparently, any old person can rule it, based on how some endings allow a dog to rule, a celebrity robot to rule, the unknown Papyrus to rule, etc.)  

To survive with mercy, with sense, and with strength, to take what was broken and work with it, to take responsibility . . . these things, the game would not allow.

What a pity.  What a waste. And yet I stand by my character's decisions, every one of them, as reasonable and just and necessary.  

I would have been the king they needed.  And whatever the game says, I declare this my ending.

 

 

The Midnight Files has ended its serial novel run.

 After 2-1/2 years, I have taken The Midnight Files down from Amazon.  It had a good run, and I'm proud to say that it ended at #33 top faved across all genres and #6 in fantasy.  Thank you for everyone who read and enjoyed it!  It will be back some day, newly edited and in hardcover format.

Happy 2025, everyone!

The Future of the Midnight Files (Post-Kindle Vella)

 A few weeks ago, Amazon announced that they were closing down their serial novel publishing format, Kindle Vella.  I immediately published the entire rest of season 2 of The Midnight Files, to let readers have a complete book, and I will leave the story up through the end of 2024.  As I understand it, unlocked episodes will continue to be available in Kindle reading formats, but purchasing new episodes won't be possible..

So what happens now?

1. I'm still writing!  There will be a total of three books/seasons in this story.  The third book will probably take me two years to write.

2. In preparation for publishing in normal ebook/paperback/hardback format, I'm doing an intense edit of the story to improve the writing and ensure continuity.  From the start, the book was heavily edited; however, what one can do and see after the fact is different than in the process.  The books will be the same books, but they will be better versions of themselves.

3. This will take time.  How much time, I don't know.  I'll update you when I do!

The 50,000th Stair Finale

I haven't been updating my blog as frequently this year as I like (I try to get a post up at least once a month), but I have by no means been writing less!  I have been working on The Midnight Files, my serial novel that will be three seasons (well, books, really) long.  

I'm not generally a super fast writer.  I average a book every 2 years, and that book averages 80k words.  I wrote Season 2, The 50,000th Stair, in two years . . . and it is the longest book I've ever written at 147k words.  So, you know, I am still writing, and I'll start writing Season 3 (which doesn't yet have a title) no later than November 1.  In the meantime, I'm working on a different writing project with a friend of mine, which I hope to zip through quite quickly.

But none of that is exactly what I wanted to talk about.  Instead, I'm going to tell you, in brief, the story of The 50,000th's Stair's finale.

The Midnight Files is written episodically -- and not just in that it's posted in episodes.  The format of the story is, per season:

1st, introductory, assignment
    Interlude at the Agency or in the past
2nd assignment
    Continuation of previous interlude
3rd assignment
    Continuation of previous interlude
4th assignment
    Continuation of previous interlude
5th, season finale, assignment
    Season extras

In each case, the assignments are of fairly comparable length except that the season finale is twice as long.  In the case of Season 1, the assignments are between 7k and 11k words long and the season finale is 21k words long.  In Season 2, the assignments are 14-22k words long, and the season finale is almost 36k words long.

As I was writing Season 2, I could guess the season finale was going to be a tizzy (I estimated 30-35k words) and that it was going to take a long time to write.  I therefore set myself up for success, and managed to write quickly enough to give me seven months to write it before it was due.

Seven months!  Plenty . . . right?

Well, apparently not, because six months in, I had very little.  I knew (and from the season title, this shouldn't be a spoiler) my agents were going to travel down to the 50,000th stair and find something very interesting there.  I had written the descent and found I couldn't write any further.  Anything I tried, anything I planned, felt boring.  What was more, even the descent felt boring.  I struggled with it, and six of my seven months evaporated.  I was getting desperate.  I knew I needed to come at it from a different angle.  But how?

Then my sister told me our mutual friend had lent her a book of Lovecraft's short stories.  Now, I knew my friend had just read the 800-page book, and I'd heard of Lovecraft and even tried to read some of his stories before, but without success.  All I had gleaned was that they had a very certain sort of atmosphere . . . and a different atmosphere and new direction was exactly what I needed.  

"Dearest sister!" I cried.  "Lend me the book!  I need it now, this moment!  Despite never having had any interest in Lovecraft before, I'm going to immediately devour the whole thing and base my own story on its prose style, tropes, and philosophy!"

The fact that I'd tried to read a couple of his stories before and failed meant nothing.  I began immediately, and did exactly what I said I would.  I read the stories, and I rewrote the descent in something vaguely reminiscent of his style.  (I reference him clearly enough that readers familiar with his work should definitely recognize the influence; but, obviously, the writing, ideas, and content are wholly my own.)  

It worked.  It worked marvelously.  The finale basically wrote itself.  I rewrote the whole thing in two weeks (the first version was only 27k; I tend to be sparse on first writes) and then deeply edited the first portion and got it double-proofread before my seven months were out.

And then I collapsed.  I wasn't done, but I collapsed, because I'd been working 40 hours a week and also writing 20 to 40 hours a week for a month.  

But I wasn't done.  A month passed as I recovered, and then . . . and then a new opportunity came my way, one unrelated to writing, and I desperately needed to immediately start work on it.  So I gave myself a week and a half, and during that time I binge-rewrote and edited (while still working nearly full time) the rest of it, edited it, got it proofread, and did the season extras while I was at it.

All in all, from start to finish, almost all the writing took place within a 3 month period, with 6 months of me going in circles.  The finale ended up being long enough that, with the season extras, I was left with a 6-month lead before the next part is due.  That should be plenty of time . . . right?

The next part will not be Lovecraftian.  Obviously.  The beauty of The Midnight Files is that each assignment is in a different style and referencing different tropes and subgenres.  As for what it will be--?

I'll find out, I guess.

(Incidentally, the book of Lovecraft short stories I read is by the Library of America.  I highly recommend it.  It is a very high quality print, and they somehow fit 800 pages into one inch of spine, so it doesn't kill my poorhands.  I also, after reading all those stories, ended up not only liking the vast majority of them, but even really liking the one I previously couldn't get through, "The Shadow Out of Innsmouth" -- which, incidentally, benefits from being read with its companion story, also in that book.  (I read the stories out of order; when I came back to that one, I'd read about half of the rest of the book.)  For me, Lovecraft is an author I had to invest in to enjoy . . . though I still find his Cthulhu lore less interesting than many of his other elements.  Certainly, as he himself acknowledged, his best story by far is "The Colour Out of Space"; it is the epitome of its type and essentially without flaw.  But every story has something to recommend it.  I bought my own copy after reading my friend's, and I'll read it again.  Pity my dog gnawed on it.)

Flora: 10-Year Adoption Anniversary

Ten years ago, on 7/3/2014, I adopted Flora from the National Mill Dog Rescue—a wonderful organization. Dog mills (or puppy mills) for those who don’t know, are breeders who breed dogs irresponsibility, sacrificing the health and happiness of the dogs to make a quick buck. If you want to learn more about that corner of evil and get really, really angry, go ahead and google more about dog mills.

In any case, I'd been looking for a dog for four months by that point. I wanted a beautiful dog (and I prefer red dogs) and, more than anything, one that would love me. I wasn't allowed a puppy at my apartment, I so looked specifically for a dog between one and four years old. I knew nothing about Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, but just before I went to the rescue to look at a different dog, I spotted Flora's face on the rescue's website and did some research on her breed. At 3-1/2 years old, she was just inside my age specifications. When I got to the rescue, I looked first at the other dog and then, uncertain, met Flora.

She pressed herself against my leg and stared up at my with her giant, melting-chocolate, romance-heroine spaniel eyes. I told the rescue that as long as she didn't have any health issues, I'd adopt her--and I took her home a week later, after she'd been spayed.

She was pretty doped up at first, and to be honest, I had no idea what I was getting in for. She did love me; she never barked at me or was alarmed by me. She slept with her head on my shoulder and was always on my lap. . . .

And she urinated on my bed when she was upset, barked constantly at whoever came by, couldn't be left for even a short time due to severe separation anxiety that led her to cry the whole time I was gone. . . .

She had never gone up stairs, never had her belly rubbed, never seen her own reflection, never stepped on autumn leaves. . . .

Cavaliers are a breed who, beyond anything, love their people, and Flora now had a person. And I had a dog. I had someone to take on walks, someone to show off to my friends, someone to care for.

Flora and I have now lived together for 10 years, and our lives have wrapped around each other. The job I have, the way I designed my house, even the kitten I adopted -- all were because of Flora.

She's old now, of course, but still spry. She has the two inevitable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel issues (stage 2 mitral valve heart disease and syringomyelia), but both are controlled by medication; and other than that and a tiny touch of arthritis in her back, according to the bloodwork/ultrasounds/ x-rays she had half a year ago . . . "her values look like she's a puppy."

She's always been incredibly healthy, especially considering her background. We still walk about two miles a day. She still tears up and eats tissues. She is calm now, and friendly, and hardly barks at all. She goes up to strangers (including children) for pets. She follows my brother-in-law around for treats and loves my young nieces. She is happy and she is loved.

On this our anniversary, I will be donating to the wonderful National Mill Dog Rescue, website https://nmdr.org/. I highly encourage any of you who are looking for a place to do some good to do the same. And as for you who want to adopt a mill dog -- they can be the most wonderful companions. But be prepared also to be very patient. These dogs are horribly traumatized.

And thank you everyone who has helped them.

Day 1: 7/3/14

Ten years later