Getting Unstuck
Writing novels is an equal mixture of swimming and walking through wet sand. The process, for me, is like breathing and then like ice skating or playing pool, two activities I have no business attempting. In writing, there are moments of inspiration that seem to flow from my heart and brain, composed of memories and imagination that propels the story into brilliance. Then that disappears, and the characters are inert, whiny, and stuck. Like life, novel writing can be mundane and stupid. You can’t decide how to get a character out of one room, so you pretend it doesn’t matter.
In life, I have had similar experiences. My reactions varied. I got a perm; I left the country, found a completely unsuitable job, and proceeded to suffer. Occasionally it has manifested in fitness or dietary acting out. I did Whole30, tried intermittent fasting, stopped eating altogether, and was very thin. The revelation was less than stunning. While I was thinner, I was precisely the same person. I took a teaching job in Abu Dhabi. Once I recovered from the culture shock, the heat, the insane amount of sand, and the horrible treatment of the essential workers, I realized I missed my husband, and while Abu Dhabi offered a change, it wasn’t a positive one for a person who hates malls.
photo by Daniel Olah
In a novel, you can do certain things. You can kill someone, throw some weather events at your people-tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, be sure your setting has a realistic chance of enduring such an occurrence. However, climate change has blurred many of these rules. However, as it is in real life, the thing that happens isn’t the thing; the thing is how your characters react and cope and your ability to make that crisis fascinating and worth reading about. As in wars, the personal story makes people cry or be terrified, the one child, the heroic grandmother, the frightened teacher, not the statistics or the body count. The event has no intrinsic value. What readers care about, what matters in life, is what happens to the people involved.
My sojourn in Abu Dhabi wasn’t interesting because I went to the Middle East. Still, my feminism, human rights stance, lack of love for shopping, and incredible arrogance led to a belief that leaving everything and everyone familiar would be okay because I was that cool. That lack of insight made the story. In writing, patience is critical. If your characters have stopped moving forward, you need to allow the pause, review the possibilities and if all else fails, introduce a serial killer, an ice storm, a tragedy, or sex to get things moving again.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach