Working through drought

I'm in the Midwest, and we're in a drought here. It's not Major yet, but we haven't had much rain, it's been hot and windy, and there's no significant rain predicted for the foreseeable future. So the D word is being bandied about.

Authors go through drought, too. There are times when we're just burned out, have no more ideas, no more energy, no more 'umph' to keep going. I know that I've certainly slowed down since I started writing seriously in 2007. Back then, I could easily do 4 or 5 books a year, many of which were pretty good, some of which needed some serious editing.

Now I'm happy to do 3 or 4 books a year and all of those are publishable. As I mentioned in my last post, I have a system that works for me -- I work like crazy on a book (book A) for 3 months, set it aside while I do research/brainstorm/ferment my next book (Book B). Then I write Book B, set it aside and go back to Book A, re-read it, tweak it, then send it to my beta reader. I then move on to Book C to ferment/brainstorm and by then, Book A has returned from my beta reader. I re-read, tweak, and usually call it done.

So I really have 3 books overlapping all the time. This is in addition to the Big Book I'm writing, which will really be 9 books by the time I'm done. Whenever I get stalled, I turn back to that series and work on it.

Where does drought fit in? I always feel like I'm in a drought when I'm in that fermenting stage. That's when I think I have an idea for a book, but I'm not sure about the characters, not sure about the plot, not sure about the setting. I have to consider ideas, discard them, flail around a bit. Once I get the back story written, then it gets stronger. I work on it some more and I think, "I'm not really a writer. Good heavens, why isn't this easier? Why can't I just sit down and write?"

Then one day, the characters and their motivations are solidly in my brain and I take off and start writing. The drought is over.

So if you're an author and you feel like you're in a drought, take heart: maybe you just haven't figured out your system yet. Maybe you just need a bit of a flail-period, where you can try and discard ideas. Maybe you just need a bit of time. Hang in there. Droughts do end, eventually.

But they're a drag when they're here, that's for sure!