A.L. Heard

With Drop the Gloves I struggled with more writer’s block than I usually do for hockey projects. Usually once I’m ready to start writing, I know the story and characters well enough that they’re dying to get on the page. Riley and Evan? Not so much – they definitely fought me at times. But as I struggled through a combination of writer’s block and just no time to write, I thought it was a good time to talk about struggles writers face.

I’m fortunate in that I don’t typically get writer’s block. I always have an idea I want to work on, so for me it’s more about choosing what I want my next project to be and making progress on it. When writer’s block hits me, it’s more that the specific project I want to put words into won’t cooperate. I know I’m hitting that point when I have actual time to write, but I avoid it. I find distractions on social media or by making moodboards or outlining, things tangentially related to what I should be doing but not actually writing. (Not gonna lie… that’s why I’m working on my Friday newsletter post on a Tuesday afternoon lol, it’s some avoidance.)

Sometimes it’s the scene in question. It might be a boring scene, or a scene I haven’t thought out much because it’s more a connector into other things, or maybe it’s THE scene of a story and I want to make sure I do it write. In The Trade Deadline, those scenes included the aforementioned trade deadline and the Lars/Anders fight afterward in The Trade Deadline. Those were scenes I really worked towards, had completely fleshed out in my mind, but hesitated a little putting them down into words because they were so crucial to the story. If they fell flat, then the emotional impact is lessened and I have to go back and rework it anyway.

Sometimes it’s the characters. I’ve mentioned online how Riley and Evan don’t really talk to me. I can usually force out words for them, but they’re not making it easy for me and it takes a lot more mental effort on my part to sit down and write a chapter. (Then again, some sections just flowed beautifully without me needing to do much. C’est la vie.) It’s a project I want to work on, but if the characters or the story won’t cooperate, I have to know to put it aside.

One of the reasons I put things aside is to let them sit in the back of my head. I completed a whole novel, the first book in a trilogy, at the end of 2023/early 2024, but I had to put down that project for a bit. It took months for me to figure out why: not only had I gotten things wrong in the timeline, but my approach to a few of the characters and their dynamics was completely wrong. Taking that time and space away from the trilogy means I now know what I have to fix when I return to it.

One of my best personal strategies for working around writer’s block is to switch to another project. Evan and Riley don’t want to talk to me? That’s fine, Tessa and Stigandr will. Or maybe it’s a bonus scene for Lars and Ryan. Someone from one of my stories is willing to work with me, so I work with them to get the juices flowing and not just ignore my writing altogether. Breaks are great, but for me long breaks are not helpful and make it harder to get back into the flow of things. Notice the huge break between Hockey Bois in 2021 and The Trade Deadline in 2024 – there was a hiatus in there for personal reasons, and even though I did publish things between, there wasn’t anything big because I couldn’t get my mojo flowing like it had been.

Switching between different projects helps with my writer’s block…but only when I have the time and motivation to write at all. That was my recent struggle in April: I had neither.

I’m not a full time writer. Maybe later when I retire, but for now I’m a full time teacher, and a mom to two young children, and a hockey player. Sometimes there aren’t a lot of opportunities to just sit and write. The Trade Deadline I mostly wrote in my phone during my son’s hockey practices. I keep a notebook so I can write my hand on days we have testing or weird schedules at school. I can find those small opportunities and make the most of them…

And then sometimes there are just times I plan old don’t feel like it. This past month there was a lot going on family-wise, and focusing on my kids was a priority. That meant the chances I got to write were times I was already emotionally and mentally drained, and it felt like a disservice to myself and the characters to push through it.

The mini-break I took was worth it. I came out of the stressful situation with no words in over a week… then wrote 4k in a single sitting. Sometimes the writer’s block is just part of the process.

What do you do when you’re struggling with writer’s block?