Getting Unstuck

by | Oct 16, 2025 | Writing | 0 comments

My writing coach client was closing in on the end of her novel. Like a pony heading back to the barn, she had picked up her pace and was clipping right along. Until she got stuck, and her writing slowed and then stopped.

She was on the road with her husband when she stumbled and ground to a halt.

“Wrote very little, so let’s skip this week,” she wrote me in an email.

Normally, I still like to meet under those circumstances, since not having any pages to discuss gives us more time for brainstorming. I just figured the travel had gotten in the way.

Wrong!

“Something wasn’t working,” she explained during a subsequent session. When she couldn’t figure out how to move forward, she just sat with it. And then sat some more. That didn’t work either.

Finally, she decided that she “couldn’t just do nothing.” So, she copied the manuscript over to a new Word document and started to play.

The answers didn’t come automatically. “I wanted to change one aspect of what I had written, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around how to do that.”

Ultimately, she found her solution, but it meant disgarding part of the ending she’d outlined.

Like life, books happen while we’re making other plans. And that’s the beauty of the creative process. When your characters start talking to you—and disagreeing with where you figured you would take them—you know they’re no longer paper puppets.

Of course, we don’t just have to recognize that shift, we have to deal with it. How we do that often boils down to trial and error until we discover the right way to move forward for ourselves and our story.

“That part of the process isn’t always so much fun,” my client confessed.

Clearly, her lack of forward movement had proved frustrating. The unexpected turn of events, however, wound up working much better than the original plan.

“Despite all the advice, we have to find the right way for ourselves,” she concluded. “In the end, it’s cool.”

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