Breaking Through Writing Paralysis

Lessons from a new project

This will be short.

I am currently in Belize City where I am offering a spiritual writing workshop and visiting Jesuit ministries. On Sunday, I will travel to Punta Gorda in the southern part of the country. It’s very hot here.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Entirely unrelated to my current whereabouts, I have begun work on a new fiction project—a space fantasy that might one day be novel-length. I find that thinking about the story is very energizing; sitting down to actually work on it, though, is quite intimidating.

How will I find the right words? Can I sustain the story? Will anyone else care about these characters? This is no good at all. I’ll never finish.

Those are the thoughts that swirl about as I scroll through my phone and pace my halls and rummage through my cabinets for snacks until, inevitably, I have to pick up my kids or jump on a Zoom call or go to sleep.

But when I’m in it—and I quite literally mean the Word document—those thoughts are nowhere to be found. I reread my words, tinkering ever so carefully. I find myself tripping into new scenes and dialogue and ideas. It’s all I can do to not jot down notes for subsequent chapters. I am compelled to keep molding the world, crafting away at the words on the page. I’m less concerned with how many words and simply pleased to see that any have shown up at all.

I’ve only just begun, and I have a very long way to go. But this constant reminder to simply jump in, to immerse myself in the words that become the world, is important. The rest comes. But first, we must enter in.

That lesson, I believe, applies far beyond the writing life.

And another thing:

• This week’s “Now Discern This” is all about my youngest daughter trying to pronounce a complex SAT word with at least two r’s in it. I mean, sorta. Give it a read.