Things I've Done During My Week(s) of Writer's Block

For over a week now--maybe two--I've been at an impasse with my third novel. I've made it all the way to the end. This isn't a messy middle stuck, this isn't a situation where I don't have anything plotted past the beginning--I'm four chapters away from the end.

But something isn't working, isn't gelling. Even though I outlined and plotted every beat of this, the last few chapters have felt like a series of conversations rather than end-of-book plot momentum, which is a shame because the book is very well plotted (if I do say so myself) for the first 2/3 or so. And I haven't been able to figure out the fix or gotten a brainwave on how to solve it.

I'm not letting it bother me, though. The last year has taught me that publishing is very, very slow, and requires an infinite amount of patience. So instead of fretting about my book, I'm walking away from it until I feel inspired to return. That may take days, weeks, or months. Even if it takes years, I still have two books to take past the finish line before it. There's truly no rush.

In the last week, I've gone from staring blankly at my manuscript to choosing to consciously step away from it and do other things. I'm not letting myself feel guilty and I'm not going to write under pressure. Instead I'm doing the following:

1) Reading. Obviously. I always read three books at a time. I call them my stacks, and I lump them either thematically OR I choose them because I think they'll help unlock something about my book.

The stack consists of one book of literary fiction, one book that lives in that more book club/upmarket space, and one book that lives in the upmarket/more commercial space. This month's stack (Second Place by Rachel Cusk/Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley which I haven't started yet/Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan) ended up unlocking

2) A huge revision of my first novel. Without going into too much detail, it was poor timing. The novel is out of my hands--however, I finally knew how to fix a few things that were needling me and had needled me for the whole eight months the novel has existed. So I went back and fixed them. And I feel really good about my fixes. They've given me a lot of confidence in myself as an editor.

3) Working with peers. I've joined a few writer's Discords and groups, I'm still offering to Beta (and Alpha) read, and I created a Reddit board focused on a part of writing that has less focus and community.

4) Writing short fiction. This was my first week doing this and I had a blast. I used Reedsy Prompt's weekly writing contest and chose one of their prompts. My first go-around is Given Circumstances, which can be found here: https://reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/author/jennie-fernandez/

The whole goal of these short pieces is to not fret too much about the writing. I read the prompt on Monday, wrote a little on Monday and Tuesday, spent Wednesday revising and posted it at the end of the day. On Friday it'll start all over again.

So there's no such thing as writer's block for me, at least not right now. It's more like writer redirection. Writer bypassing. Maneuvering.