When It Gets Hard

Writing isn't always a cake walk. Sometimes the words are slow to come. Sometimes you're easily distracted, and you're doing more Twitter-checking than writing. Sometimes you have no idea what's going to happen next, and you watch the cursor blink, blink, blink while your mind goes blank. Sometimes you see the scene in your head, and it's perfect, but you're having trouble translating it to paper.

There's an endless arsenal of things against you when you write. That's why it's hard. That's why not everybody does it. That's why even less people finish, and even less than that get published. But we WANT it, don't we? So we find ways to push through the hard parts.

I'm not a serious plotter--at least for this WIP--so my hard parts tend to be the "What the heck happens next?" kind. I know the ending, though. That's something that I MUST know before I even begin. Maybe not the exact details, but a general sense of how things turn out. I also know a few scenes that happen throughout the story. Again, nothing specific, but they are points that I know I'll get to eventually. Before I get to those points, though, is where I have the trouble. So what I've started doing is having brainstorming sessions before I even sit down to write.

Basically, I play my WIP playlist, lay on the floor or couch with a notebook and pen, and THINK. Clearly, it's a very scientific process. I plan out the next scene, writing a small summary of it in my notebook, and then I write it. Then I plan the scene after that, and then I write it. I do this until I get to one of my pre-planned "points". And then I do it again. I have to admit, it's a little stressful not knowing what's going to happen next, but I've tried plotting before, and I always, ALWAYS stray from it. Characters evolve or things pop up that I didn't expect. So even though this way seems harder to me, I kind of like it better.

Now it's your turn :) What's the hardest part of writing for you, and what do you do to push through it?