How to End Writer's Block (By Writing)
After being blocked and only intermittently able to write for the last few months, I seem to have cracked the problem! Lately I’ve been getting in the groove as soon as I start typing, and it feels very good.
Here’s what I did to prime the pump:
Stopped trying to force it. The stress of trying to write and only getting a couple of words out (or just staring at the screen) makes me even less able to write.
Read. Reading is the opposite of writing [citation needed] so it flexes you in another direction and relaxes you.
Wrote a very short fanfiction. I picked up a pinch hit for an exchange with a very low minimum word count and wrote something quickly for a Purpose, as a gift.
Started writing a fanfic based on what I was reading. (Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, btw.)
Turned to another fanfiction I’d started a while back to procrastinate on the first. Finished and posted it.
Went back to the previous fanfic and finished and posted it.
I think the high of finishing multiple things (because they were all quite short) gave me the energy I needed to figure out how to get going with A Run of Better Fortune. I made a slight tweak to the chapter that was currently unfolding, stopping to show something happening and letting characters talk about it instead of summarizing and galloping past. And … that was it! I’m in the zone again!
I said last month that I was going to post chapters of Mary Marchbanks on an every-other-week schedule, but in actuality (as you noticed if you subscribed to the WordPress site) I decided to post a chapter every Saturday morning, my time. Only posting twice a month would mean that it would take a little over two years for the whole book to be published. So to round up:
In these chapters, we meet Mary and her immediate family, and kick off a change of location that will have momentous results (ie, make the whole story happen).
The link is at the bottom of each chapter, but I just want to remind you that if you’d like to get each chapter mailed to you weekly in a cute physical form, you can sign up for that via Ko-Fi! With the cost of postage these days, you are essentially paying for the stamps and giving me a dollar on top of it.
This month’s fashion history analysis:
I happened to see this posted to Tumblr, and my eye was caught by both the floridness and the lack of a date given. I immediately put it at 1867-1870 due to the hairstyle, which was fashionable in a pretty small window between the earlier 1860s (when you wanted a low but massive bun) and the early 1870s (when you wanted some massive but higher on the back of the head, usually with hanging curls as well). This is a sort of wide but flat bun across the top of the back of the head, with a ribbon tied around it.
Her gown is … perplexing, and my guess is that it’s being used here as a costume. The high neckline is appropriate for the late 1860s, but a few things are very off. The line down the front looks like a seam, not a closure, and a back closure hadn’t been common since the early 1850s. The excess of fabric at the top of the sleeves points to the early 1830s (though it’s a style that came back in a minor way during the early 1860s). The skirt being gathered or gauged all the way around is also odd: by 1865, skirts were being made with panels that were narrower at the top (“gored”) and either fully fitted to the waist in the front or lightly pleated. However, both of these moderately outdated aspects are also reminiscent of women’s clothing in the Renaissance, particularly in Venice in the sixteenth century. Conti often painted historical scenes, so it’s very possible that this was meant to be something midway between his Serious Costumed Genre Art and a modern portrait.
Likewise, this style of fan - a handscreen fan, rather than a folding one - is something that women were using in the 1860s, but specifically because it was a revival of an “antique” look. Here’s one from the 1860s in the Met’s collection, and here’s an Italian Renaissance portrait featuring one.
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