Change of Scenery

I have to confess. I hit a wall a couple of weeks ago. Book #3 has been taking formation, but not very smoothly. I finished the first draft about two weeks ago--which to be fair is only a glorified 10,000 word outline. That may sound like a lot of words, but in reality is a choppy mess of about thirty pages. But that's okay. This is how it all starts.

The real problem is that I have been stumbling to get back into it again. I want to get moving on draft two, but feel literally stuck in the mud. At this point, all I'm going to say is that I am experiencing new challenges with this book, which can be a good thing if you want to look at the brightside of things.

I'm excited to push myself to work on something a little beyond my comfort zone, but it's been creating a number of mental blocks for me at the sametime.

So...when I fell ill to the viral bug circulating around our home I hauled my behind up to bed, dragging the laptop with me. Between sniffle blows and sips of tea I got moving on draft two. I'm about 5.000 words into the second draft...and that feels pretty good. I guess what I am getting at is that if you find yourself stumbling with your writing...if you're getting blocked...try a change of scenery (and unplug from the internet).

I found that when I was out of my office, which provides a number of distractions, like papers to file, school lessons to plan, the internet, Facebook, email--just to name a few--I was able to contect with my story and my characters. Our laptop's wireless connection has been disabled, so whenever I would get that wild hair to research a little something I couldn't. I had to stick with the story, make a little note in the text, and keep writing. And I will have to admit I was pleased with the results!

What sort of writing struggles do you have? How do you combat them?