Returning to The Flow Requires Action

It’s all about doing the work.

A little over a month ago, I completed the work on a new novel. Jay and Char Save the Galaxy is a bit of a departure from my usual. It’s sci-fi comedy with a healthy dollop of absurdity.

I’m working on going over edits for the Savespace trilogy. Book one is nearly done (and the audiobook recorded), and book 2 goes out to the editor this week. I’m working on getting my edits of book 3 done so that I can send it to the editor. The trilogy will start publishing in the fall of 2024, likely beginning in September. Jay and Char Save the Galaxy will be put out there in 2025.

As I’ve written a few times of late, I’ve several different stories in various stages of development. Four more books in the Forgotten Fodder clone and conspiracy sci-fi series, a new fantasy series, and another potential sci-fi project or two.

There’s just one small problem. I’m not getting far on making headway with any of these. The Forgotten Fodder books are plotted, but I’m not finding the desire to start them. The fantasy series idea is taking shape, book 1 has been given an overall plot, but no specifics beyond that. All the other projects are not much past basic ideas.

Thus, I’m not making my goal of writing at least 1500 words of fiction daily. This is causing me some distress and has been challenging me.

A solution has been found, but implementing it means facing and conquering Resistance.

Steven Pressfield’s definition of Resistance

I’ve mentioned before that I got a lot out of reading (listening to) Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. His amazing book is an excellent insight into the mindset of a professional and what goes into doing art professionally, how to maintain it, and the like.

One of the key elements of the book is called Resistance. As defined by Mr. Pressfield, Resistance is a force that stands against your work to be your best self. It frequently manifests as procrastination, excuses, indecision, and anything and everything that keeps you from doing your work.

To quote Mr. Pressfield from The War of Art,

“Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.”

Resistance, by this definition, causes me to freeze up, procrastinate, and not do the work I set myself to do. Thus, the 1500 daily words of fiction are not happening.

Why? I believe I’m at an impasse because I’m scared. This is because despite having 12 books out in the world, these next 4 are a wholly new venture. What if they do no better than the others? What if this proves I’m foolish for continuing down this same path?

That’s Resistance rearing its ugly head. Again, quoting Pressfield and The War of Art,

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

Recognizing this, it’s up to me to take action and fight Resistance.

Action to return to the flow

The best way to do anything at all is to act on it.

You can plan, plot, and consider anything under the sun until the cows come home. However, to make anything at all happen, you must take action.

After discussing this issue and my recent lack of writing fiction with my therapist, she made an excellent suggestion. Go back to writing as a pantser.

If you don’t recall this concept, there are arguably two primary kinds of fiction writers. Planners and pantsers. Planners, as the name suggests, make plans and create plots, outlines, and sometimes even more detail well before they start in on the actual novel.

Pantsers, on the other hand, write by the seat of their pants. They might have done some preliminary world-building or other bits before starting, but mostly they write with no set plan or infrastructure in place. It’s ass on the chair, hands on the keyboard, words on the screen as ideas flow from your mind to your fingers and onto the page.

Note – there are other types of writers out there. You can also be a hybrid of a planner and a pantser. I for one, have started to do more plans before writing, but the actual story unfolds in sometimes unexpected ways when the work is done. A little planning and a little pantsing, both.

I’ve not just sat and written, sans plan, since the completion of the first four books of my Void Incursion sci-fi series. Forgotten Fodder, Savagespace, Check and Mate (the last Void Incursion novel), and Jay and Char Save the Galaxy were all outlined before the full-story writing began. Going back to the flow that pantsing involves is an intriguing idea.

How will this return the totality of the flow?

The past few weeks, apart from some fits and starts, have been a great deal of inaction on the fiction-writing front. Ergo, sitting and writing something by the seat of my pants, like I used to write, is a useful idea.

This is the equivalent to jump-starting a car. Get those juices floating, and who knows how that might inspire me.

Yes, writing as a pantser again might produce some garbage. The 1500 words of fiction I create might be useless overall. What I create might join the large number of half-started, half-thought-out stuff in a folder labeled “Story Concepts and Starters” that lives in my computer (and on my backup flashdrive).

One more time, quoting Mr. Pressfield and The War of Art,

“How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.”

This is the approach I need to put in place to get the flow of my writing back to where I desire for it to be. For me, I need to remember that it’s the work that I love to do, but not doing it means Resistance is dominating my life. That’s not how I desire to live. Knowing returning to flow requires action, the time to act is here and now.

Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you, I conclude with this: