Focus.
Yea. That’s one way. Keep whacking away at it.
Writer’s block? Just keep whacking away at it.
Or:
Take a different trail.
Got stuck with your murder mystery? What do you feel like doing? Maybe your muse is whispering about a lost space transport in a parallel dimension of time that appears in the 1980s that we knew. Maybe you should go with that. The murder mystery will still be there when you’re done with that. (Or get stuck with that.)
What if you’re working on deadline? All the more reason to trail off on a tangent. On two tangents. On three tangents. As many as possible, as quickly as possible. Keep iterating, iterating, iterating, till you come back to the murder mystery. And the problem will be solved.
Hey, the tangent you need might even be to go do your accounts.
The thinking behind this theory is thin-slicing, is adaptability, is rapid iterations. In other words: ready, fire, aim.
It is a legitimate technique used by many famous people. (So you know it’s solid.) It’s what they mean when they talk about putting your nose to the grindstone. It’s what they mean when they talk about DOING THE WORK. It’s what they mean when they talk about putting in the hours.
Somerset Maugham and his “inspiration always strikes at precisely 9 am every day”. It’s The War of Art guy’s sitting down and “invoking the muses”. It’s that other guy’s saying that “good art is simply good work”.
Yea, you’ve gotta work, but you can’t sit at the computer and stare at the blinking cursor. You’ve gotta write something. And if you can’t write what you need to write, write something else. Just write. It’ll work itself out eventually.
