When writers get stuck

Someone on Twitter said she was stuck on her current project and asked for suggestions for getting unstuck. I started to reply, then realized it would turn into a huge thread.  So, here I am.  Note: as I understand it, stuck on current project is not the same phenomenon as “writer’s block.”   The former is, “I don’t know what the next sentence is,” the latter is, “I can’t write and I don’t know why.” So far, I’ve never had writer’s block, so I cannot pretend to give advice on how to deal with it.

There are many tricks for getting the next sentence on the page.  None of them work for everyone, and none of them work all the time for anyone.  The most I can say is that if you collect enough of them, there is a good chance one of them will help in any given situation.

Here are some of the methods that have worked for me:

1. Write a long, tedious passage about your protagonist not knowing what to do, at the end of which he or she might figure it out, at which point you delete the long, tedious passage.

2. Fallback scenes.  Raymond Chandler famously said that if he didn’t know what would happen next, he had someone come through the door with a gun. In my case, when in doubt, have a meal. In any case, this scene, also, can be deleted once it gets you unstuck.

3. Look for tropes or motifs in the earlier chapters. You very likely have them even if you aren’t aware of it.  For example, suppose in chapter 1 someone is looking through a window, and then in chapter 3 someone else is looking through a window.  Now that you’re aware of it, you can play with it, and, have someone look through a window, tell us what’s there, and possibly generate something interesting.  Another thing about this method is that some critic might notice it and decide it’s Art.  I once did that with a series of puns based on lines from Hamlet; when I didn’t know what would happen, I’d pick another pun and write toward it, and by the time I’d get there I had a good feel for where to go afterwards.  In that case, no one thought it was art.

4. Switch points of view.  Write a scene from your antagonist’s point of view, or that of a side character; what are those people up to right now?  And (as always) if it works to get you unstuck, feel free to delete it.

5. Consider your structure.  This is similar to 3, but instead of motifs, see if you have a pattern in the types of scenes you’ve been writing.  For example, conversation followed by a fight followed by a chase.  If you see a pattern like that, you can continue it, or consciously break it; either might help get the words moving again.

6. Reread what you have so far while asking yourself, “What does the reader think is going on?” and then figure out a way to mess with the reader’s head. Messing with the reader’s head is always a good thing. It causes them pain and they will thank you for it.

I might expand this as I think of other methods I’ve used.  Meanwhile, writers: What are some of your methods?

“We live in a democracy, therefore the government represents us.”

(I’ll be adding this to my socialism FAQ, but for now I think it deserves it’s own post.)

The logic here is what fascinates—the mechanical formality, starting with rigid definitions and proceeding step by careful step to absurdity. The old scholastics of the middle ages would certainly have approved, but if we don’t want to do our political analysis using the method of  St. Thomas Aquinas, we need to do better.  Here’s how the logic works:

1. We live in what is called a democracy (or a democratic republic, if you want to be fussy).
2. By definition, this means we elect those who govern us, and can thus elect anyone we want to carry out our will.
3. Therefore, those in office are carrying out our will.
4. Therefore, most Americans are in favor of massive income inequality, genocide, making the Earth uninhabitable, right-wing censorship, pseudo-left censorship, a barbaric health care system, murderous police, the loss of democratic rights, homelessness, letting COVID kill us by the hundreds of thousands, and continuous war.

That there are those who follow this chain and believe—or act as if they believe—that it represents reality continues to astound me. But it is common enough that it is worth taking a look at.

..1 In a bourgeois democracy, the bourgeois always takes precedence over the democracy. Theoretically, we know that if the rights and privileges of the ruling class are threatened—particularly the right to make unlimited profit—democracy narrows, shrinks, and becomes more limited. In practice, we are watching it happen before our eyes.

The whole world saw what happened when Senator Sanders dared to suggest that capitalism could become not quite so mean all the time. That he was never a real threat to capitalism and would in fact have done nothing significant for the working class made no difference; his pretensions had to be crushed using legal and quasi-legal means. He isn’t the first to discover the ruthlessness of the American bourgeoisie and the Democratic Party in particular when it comes to making sure Wall Street never feels the least pinch! Gene McCarthy (honestly or not) spoke for those who wanted an end to the Vietnam war and was destroyed. Bill Clinton, swine though he is, made tiny, halfhearted efforts toward improving health care and suddenly a sex scandal emerged. &c &c,

..2 The media are part of the capitalist system, controlled by a few (and getting fewer) mega corporations, all of whom have, at the top of their agenda, convincing us that there is no possibility of any political change outside of the two capitalist parties. Billions and billions of dollars go into this every year (whether conspiratorially or simply by natural selection of editors and publishers is irrelevant). While I disagree with those who believe propaganda is all-powerful, it is silly to think that propaganda on such a massive scale is without effect.

..3 At the very least, one ought to reflect on the significance of the fact that every political gain since Reconstruction—unemployment insurance, civil rights, medicare, welfare, &c—has come as a result of direct struggles by the working masses, not by selecting the right candidate.

On Art and Commerce and Pseudo-Activism

Let’s talk about art and commerce.

To get the obvious stuff out of the way, first, I am using here a very broad definition of art, so we can simply skip the arguments about what is and isn’t art. Second, those of you who want to make Garfunkle jokes, or any of the other oh-so-original cracks playing off the word “art,” please feel free to do so in the privacy of your own blog.

It is obvious that art and commerce are intertwined, and have been since class society has existed, and will continue to be so as long as class society exists. That does not, however, mean we have to be pleased about it, nor that we cannot do what we can to fight it. Simply accepting it, is to accept money as the measure of quality of a work of art, and I am unwilling to do that.

And yet, here is the problem: among so many people today, particularly people who call themselves progressives, there appears to be a conviction that the most important thing about a work of art is not if it moves the audience, not if it shows us something about life, not if helps us understand people who are unlike us, not if it challenges our beliefs, not if it helps us work through moral issues that perhaps we haven’t considered, but, rather money. Because I keep hearing things like this:

We cannot support this person, he gives money to bad causes. And this person has been accused of having done terrible things, so we must deprive him of money. That person is clearly evil, and must be punished by having his income reduced. This person over here is much more deserving of reward, and therefore the money that would go to someone else should go here instead.

Have you considered that, when you say that, what you are really saying is, “The most important aspect of a work of art is what the artist does with the income it generates”?

That’s it, that’s what you’re saying. This is such a complete capitulation to the values of capitalism, an utter surrender to the most loathsome forms of commercialism, that it astonishes me that anyone who expresses it could consider her- or himself anything but an utter conservative.

There is one writer—I shan’t name him, because I fear some of you would stop reading him—who is, or at least was, a conservative, right-wing Republican. As a writer, he has a sharp eye for detail, a deft hand with touching one’s emotional buttons, and an outstanding ability to express human interaction. I consider his work to be among the most subversive in our field; it takes a real effort to read him and not have one’s view of society called into question, to not see how capitalist society degrades and tries to crush the human spirit, and how we are capable of heroism in resisting it.

To get personal for a moment, I consider myself a red, a revolutionary. If I had the talent and skill to do one tenth as effective a job of calling the status quo into question in my books as he does in his, I’d be satisfied indeed.

Would he agree with this analysis? Hell no. I don’t care. What I care about is that his work challenges society as it is, and encourages everyone who reads it to do the same. If he then takes the money he’s paid and gives it to causes I consider vile, that is more than made up for by the truth he reveals; his work is a thousand times more progressive then the philistines who would attack him.

You are not standing on the moral high ground, it just looks that way because your vision is impaired.