IT'S GUEST AUTHOR SATURDAY!! Please welcome historical romance author Sarah Payne

 

Hi Sarah! It is so nice to welcome you to my blog today and share your post regarding the very real struggle of writers' blocks which exists for so many authors at different times in their career. Myself included! Over to you...

I have always been a prolific writer. I never had writer’s block or trouble sitting down and starting right where I left off. I have been very lucky in that respect. So, imagine my surprise when after announcing I would be writing a four-book series of a story covering a train crash in a tunnel trapping all the passengers inside I have had difficulty doing so. How they survive and how they live for the months underground and how they finally escape is so real to me, it should be easy. It hasn’t been.

                I am usually a pantser which means I let the characters carry all the weight of where the story goes. I, as the writer, explain where they are, when they are and all the rest, but the story stays true to the characters’ point of view and their lives as they lived it. I knew the story and where it was going and how it would end when I wrote the first line…and then I went blank!

                I had whole paragraphs pre-written about the passengers eventual finding freedom and their homecoming. I had people falling in love followed by weddings. I had deaths and births and everything in between. But I could not get my head into the second book…let alone into the third or fourth.

                So, I did what any writer would do – I decided to cut it back to three books. When I sat down to write, I still heard crickets so I cut it back to two books. I had the paragraphs so I should have been able to finish this project in a few days. But for some reason, I couldn’t. I finally understand how authors get into a rabbit-hole. I have written two other novels while trying to finish this one about the trapped train passengers.

                I’m hoping to force myself into working on it – as soon as I get this blog piece done…and then there may be a zoom I have to attend. A meeting is coming up so I should get ready for that. And, oh, yeah, I have the second Train Town book to write.

                I may need to go at this like eating an elephant. One bite at a time or rather one paragraph at a time. Maybe more than one, but you get my drift. I simply need to take the time and put the words I hear so clearly in my head down on paper. It’s the part I love the most doing so it should never have become so arduous for me.

                To all of you who are writers and fell into writer’s block, I apologize for not sympathizing with you more. I had never experienced the frustration of having a story out there partly finished. It is as if someone stole one of my children from me before I was done raising him or her. I can hear myself shout out, ‘Wait – I wasn’t done with that one yet.’

                I used to write several stories at a time so running out of steam on one only got me ready to write additional words to another. I was truly blessed with words and ideas and simply didn’t know it. I will look upon my gift in a different light after this episode is finished.

                I feel time may be upon me so that I can finish the thing. It is keeping me from moving on to more writings. Ones with new characters and exciting plots. Places I have never been before. Characters I have yet to meet. Ones who I must ignore so that I can write the ending to my now defunct series.

                The story is there so I must finish. I will use it as a reminded not to get too far ahead of myself. I must wait for the story to come to me – not force myself to make-up a story before its ready. I think all writers know when their story is ready to be born. This one needed a little time in the neonatal ward before coming out for the world to meet.

I hope this will be the end of my story and my readers will enjoy the outcome of my work.

Email:  authorspayne@gmail.com

Web: http://www.authorsusanpayne.com

 BLURB & BUY LINKS for Sarah's latest release ALWAYS IN MY HEART...out now!

Jessica thought she had met the man of her dreams only to find her life turned into a nightmare after being abandoned in a strange town with a child on the way. How had she been so smitten as to not see the true man beneath? Never again would she ever trust anyone. If she ever found her husband and the child he had taken from her, she promised he would rue the day.

Robert MacMillan had searched for his wife and child for years only to find she never had the child with her. Realizing the error they both were living with, he vowed to never again allow Jessica out of his sight and their child out of his life.

 Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Always-My-Heart-Western-Romance-ebook/dp/B0CB9BGRHP