I thought about this and then I realised I had my character's lifestyles the wrong way around. I also found a new song and realised their relationship should definitely be more stormy. I tried again and although a little better, those teeth were still queuing up to get pulled.
A day of cleaning came around. Remember those? They don't happen as often as they should do in my house, but still far more than I'd like. But it forced me to spend a whole day listening to music and thinking, just thinking while I scrubbed. And that's when it occurred to me, I was trying to write about something I knew nothing about. Even with the research I had managed so far I didn't feel confident. So I changed the job.
Not content with that, I continued to analyse why it was going wrong and I realised it was action that was missing from my tale - that's tale, not tail! - and I was about to write about a time of year I had no interest in and nothing was going to happen. So I thought some more. What would give me some action? (For my characters!) And as I thought about the setting and the life around them I realised, if I just moved the timeline on 6 months, there would be plenty going on to hang all my characters' baggage around.
That evening I wrote out a new plan, amended the few thousand words I'd already written and got started. At last!
So the next time you come a cropper and can't figure out why you can't put one word in front of the other, maybe it's time to change the lines.
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