Getting Out of a Writing Slump

For the past few days I had been sinking into the longest and deepest writing slump of my life. At the start of October, I had decided to do NaNo. It would have been my first NaNo and I was tremendously excited. I decided to plan a rough outline of the MG novel I would be re-writing as well as outlining books 2 and 3.

But, someone up there had different plans for me. Every time I started rewriting or planning the outline, it was dismissed by my inner editor as being too mediocre, too clichéd, too  stereotypical. My inner editor constantly shouted, “Try something different. Go for the unusual. ”

I think being on submission too did its bit. Querying is a nerve twisting process, especially for writers like us (being in  India we are too far away from the hub of the publishing world) who have no access to  conferences or cannot get a referral. Most agents I wanted to query were closed to submissions. They either wanted to work with a writer they had met at a conference or a writer who was referred to them by one of their clients.

My writing  (crit) partners rallied around me, but every writer’s advice clashed with the other writer’s.  I was driving myself crazy.

My best friends during that 14 day long slump were all the writing craft books I had bought. At any moment you could see these books lying on my bed. I would be frantically making notes on how to hook the readers from page one, how to move the conflict  up to the first page, make the story question apparent as soon as was possible.

I had  done very little writing in the last few days, though I brainstormed a lot. To get away from all this, I plunged into reading. Reading is very theraupetic. I read two books from the Kane Chronicle Series, I enjoyed Hunger Games, I read Animal Farm. I also went out a lot; caught up with my non-existent social life and stopped thinking of both the query business and writing that perfect book.

Slowly the sun shone out from among the dark and stormy clouds. I think it was my faith in God that provided the ultimate break through. The break through finally happened, though I didn’t feel the effects immediately, I know the cobwebs covering my creative cells are falling away and the writer’s block is melting.

This was literally the worst phase of my writing life. I definitely don’t want to go through this again. Has something like this happened to you? Have you been in prolonged writing slumps? How many days has the slump lasted and how did you manage to get out of it? Please share your stories, we all can benefit a lot from it.