>write fantasy again but my audience reads westerns
Well heck, that's easy. Build a new audience. You're welcome! <g>
Glad you're writing again, Chessie, but I feel something akin to your pain. I have my story but it's proving difficult to make any headway. I've had plenty of distractions I can blame, but as the months roll on, I get this uneasy feeling that something else might be at play here.
Which brings me back to the OP. "Writer's block" covers an awful lot of territory. It rarely means "I sit down every day and every day not one single word goes on paper." We're most all of us writers here so I won't bother reciting the countless variations that all come to "making very little progress." Instead, I'm focused on the variables. There's what is in play that very day I sit down--could be anything from a bad night's sleep to general malaise (the ranking general in the Army Writing Corps) to actual illness. Or nothing identifiable at all.
But twelve days later it's something else. And in those twelve days, I've changed a bit. Make it four months and I'm not the same writer. I don't have the same enthusiasm for that story idea, but have and new enthusiasms. The sands shift continually.
I think this is why advice about writer's block is always right and never quite right. It's always right for someone at some point, and never quite right for me today. I don't have any answers. I'm sure of only this much: if I can walk away, if I can stop, then I'm not a writer. A writer is a poor soul who is chained to the word, who cannot stop writing no matter how bad it is. I do think it's possible to be a writer for a while. My "for a while" has run about fifty years so far and I'm still not taking any bets.
Well heck, that's easy. Build a new audience. You're welcome! <g>
Glad you're writing again, Chessie, but I feel something akin to your pain. I have my story but it's proving difficult to make any headway. I've had plenty of distractions I can blame, but as the months roll on, I get this uneasy feeling that something else might be at play here.
Which brings me back to the OP. "Writer's block" covers an awful lot of territory. It rarely means "I sit down every day and every day not one single word goes on paper." We're most all of us writers here so I won't bother reciting the countless variations that all come to "making very little progress." Instead, I'm focused on the variables. There's what is in play that very day I sit down--could be anything from a bad night's sleep to general malaise (the ranking general in the Army Writing Corps) to actual illness. Or nothing identifiable at all.
But twelve days later it's something else. And in those twelve days, I've changed a bit. Make it four months and I'm not the same writer. I don't have the same enthusiasm for that story idea, but have and new enthusiasms. The sands shift continually.
I think this is why advice about writer's block is always right and never quite right. It's always right for someone at some point, and never quite right for me today. I don't have any answers. I'm sure of only this much: if I can walk away, if I can stop, then I'm not a writer. A writer is a poor soul who is chained to the word, who cannot stop writing no matter how bad it is. I do think it's possible to be a writer for a while. My "for a while" has run about fifty years so far and I'm still not taking any bets.