What writer's block looks like in early March

Updated on Wednesday, 3 March, 2010 at 2:54 PM by Melody

Another week, another series of stalling techniques. I present a timeline for you, related to what goes on behind the scenes as I prepare for another writing session that will lead to the eventual publication of my novel:

• Tuesday, 8:30pm-ish: Learn that it's very likely I'll be the only one at my writer's group today. Am not necessarily surprised, since I know that the others who used to come here so regularly are up to here with other projects. Am a little bummed, and consider not going since it shouldn't matter where I am, I can write, anyway, right? 
• Tuesday, 10:00pm-ish: Recall friend's early assertion that

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Writing a novel vs. launching a huge site: rationalization or rational thinking?

Remember that novel I'm writing? Sure, I've mentioned it here before. Several times! Only, it's been so long since I've written anything worthy in my novel that I almost believe I have to stop saying "I'm finally writing my novel."

There's a quandary that's dancing all over my thoughts of what it means to "push through your writer's block." Here's the thing: For over a year now, I've been passively working on a website that will separate everything related to work, from everything related to my personal interests. Which means the goal is to retain this site as my personal one, and launch a different one for business purposes. In spite of the fact that I continue on, seemingly oblivious to how inadvisable it is to intertwine personal blogging and professional efforts in a single location, it actually bothers me quite a lot. But people, do you know how much work it takes to actually create an entire site from scratch? No. I don't mean the design. I have that pretty much locked down. The other stuff, though? The planning and goal setting and development of content? All that stuff is

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A List of 11 Things: My response to yesterday's writer's block

Since Wednesdays at noon I regularly meet with a group of writers to work on my novel, the luxury of saying "I'm not in the mood to write" is not an option I've chosen to give myself. It's been my goal, instead, to be fiercely protective of these two hours. Barring Thanksgiving week, I've met this goal.

But what happens if Writer's Block shows up during your designated writing time? Yesterday I got to find out.

Here's what I did during my 2 hour writing session when writer's block showed up:

1. Edited my opening scene,
2. Fantasized about how much fun it would be, On This Particular Wednesday, to just curl up in bed and read my novel to find out what's going to happen, instead of taking the time and All That Effort to write it,
3. Realized that wasn't really productive use of my time,
4. Scrolled through my scene list until I found one I was nominally interested in, and fleshed out my notes about what happens there,
5. Wrote a first draft of part of that scene,
6. Decided that a minor character is going to be

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