: Re: I feel suddenly disconnected from my writing. Time for a break? I’ve been working on a first draft of a project since January and have been steadily working on it for hours a day every

@Ravi5107385

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"Take a break" will probably be a part of any useful advice, but the hard part is what it's paired with. While you're not taking that 75% up to 76, what will you be doing instead?

I know from experience that not only does this kind of block not have to stop you from writing something else, but it can even give you new ideas for and re/energise you regarding your old project, and then you can go back to it. Oh sure, the new thing you write might get abandoned just when it's getting going, but that's up to you.

And I know you said your problem isn't a "lack of ideas", but I think it might be - just not in the way people think of when they hear the phrase. When I switched from one project to another, I knew exactly what I wanted to happen next plotwise in the work I'd left behind. What I didn't know, however, was how I wanted to deepen the protagonist's characterisation in doing so. The story I switched to had her as a secondary character, older now, more powerful and an ambiguous threat to the main characters. Before I knew it, I was concentrating so much on her it was to the detriment of the new story, which frankly wasn't working. But that's OK, because it deepened my understanding of her well enough to go back to the old one, which was my real priority.

Even if you don't feel like writing the first few chapters of a different story just to "recharge", you can spitball ideas for what your characters would do in different situations.

And I have one more piece of advice, concerning what will happen before you return to your current work. Could someone look at what you have so far, make some feedback notes and then send them to you? At this stage they'd only be an alpha reader, not a beta reader, because draft 1 isn't even finished yet, and it's up to you how much you tell them about what would happen in the last quarter. Don't see them as a source of advice on how to write that last quarter; no feedback should do that, and if you get it just ignore it. But you owe it to yourself to find out whether an alpha read could be summarised as "fix these things in-line" or "there are issues that require a from-scratch rewrite".

If the former happens, it might tell you some of the same things about characterisation you could learn from the second project. But the latter would be worse, right? Not necessarily. Sometimes, the reason you can't find it in you to continue writing a story, even though you know what'll happen, is because what you've written so far is subconsciously bothering you. I realise a rewrite can be a lot of work (especially if not much old material feels salvageable), but it may get you finished sooner than having indefinite writer's block.

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