This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
by Anna Bell
I've always been pleased that I've never suffered from writer's block. I can’t imagine a worse thing for a writer. Yet now, I feel I'm suffering from something else – the writing fog, where my mind isn't clear enough to think about writing. Has anyone else ever had this affliction, which prevents you from focusing on your novel?
I thought I was doing really well with my work after having my second baby. My baby is nine weeks old now and since she arrived I've reviewed both line edits and copy edits for my upcoming book. I've been really pleased, managing the edits and my baby and toddler. It gave me hope that I'd be able to carry on working with the kids and that it would all be okay. I'd even started to edit some of the book that comes after that. The hope being I could lightly edit the half I've already written and then carry on writing. But now the fog has descended.
Where I was quite chipper and bounding around having energy and enthusiasm for my work, now my mind just seems cloudy. I can't even tell you what happens in the half a novel I've written. I'm trying to read through it to remember as all my mental energy seems to going on making sure the little people in my life are clothed, fed and changed. I barely know what day of the week it is, and I can hardly string sentences together. I'm not in that newborn haze of tiredness that I was with my first baby, but my brain is frazzled.
At the moment I'm really down about my writing. I desperately want to keep going with it, but I can't write in this fog. So I'm giving myself a break. I'm not even going to think about writing more of my novel until after Christmas. I might read through what I've written a few times to try and cement in my mind what the plot is! I can do that on the Kindle app on my phone and so I can squeeze it into times when my baby is feeding and my toddler is napping. I'm hoping that by rereading it, it will keep it fresh in my mind and plant the daydreams. I like to think about scenes I'm going to write, so that when I get to my computer the words tumble out quickly. Yet now the fog is even blocking the daydreams.
Have other writers suffered with the fog, be it from having kids, stressful day job or illness in the family etc? Does it clear? Please give me hope!
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