BY MCKENNA GARDNER
On occasion, I struggle with back pain. Most likely, this is a result of sitting and typing for hours on end, but I’ve also been in a few minor accidents in my life. I even broke the tip of my tailbone off while snowboarding. Apparently, you don’t need that part too much, though it causes one hell of a pain to lose it.
Currently, I have a pinched nerve in my lower back, creating a fantastic, super-helpful pain which radiates down my hind end and wraps around my leg to my knee. Since I can’t think of much else until that goes away, I’m using it to create an analogy about writing.
Sciatica demands examination of the nervous system, the “problem indicator” for our bodies. Stories, regardless of length, have similar systems which notify us when deeper issues are affecting surface problems.
For example, if you have been typing furiously for days and days on end, and then suddenly you find each and every paragraph a struggle, it could be a sign that something else is going on, not just that your brain abruptly refuses to cooperate.
One of our authors, Anika Arrington, has advised writers on this subject: “When you find yourself blocked, go back to the last place it was working, and do something different.”
Is the conflict deep enough to challenge their efforts? Is the setting a good fit? Are the interactions between characters moving the plot along? Dig as deep as a physician would to discover the source of your pain. You are, after all, your story’s primary care specialist.
Radiating pain is tricky, though. Its location can be misleading. You might think that you have a dilemma with your plot—conflict doesn’t strike frequently enough, or the rising action isn’t exciting enough—when in reality, your character is solving all his concerns without digging deep into his psyche to find the answers.
Continue to probe. Use a strong sounding board when you can’t clearly see a way out. We can become blinded to the real issue since we wrote each word which created the complication to begin with. A trusted advisor can help us see it again through the reader’s eyes.
Often, the task of diagnosing the dominant cause of a plot or character pain is arduous. Sometimes it takes weeks to fix, with repeat visits and analysis. There are times when it is required that you simply make a clean cut to remove the unnecessary section. It can be painful to do so, but you didn’t need it anyway.
Sometimes it takes only one good crack at it, and the hitch is solved. The pain is gone, and you can move on.
The trick is finding the true source of the problem and straightening it out. Then the radiating pain will seem to magically vanish.
As senior editor, McKenna Gardner breaks her back keeping us all in line. As Writer M. Irish Gardner, she reveals the inner workings of her convoluted brain in the short story “Reformation” which appears in A Dash of Madness: a Thriller Anthology, released in July, 2013.
McKenna’s heavy lifting at The X includes several projects, not the least of which is Shadow of the Last Men by J. M. Salyards, released in September, 2013. Her next project, A Mid Summer Night’s Steampunkby Scott E. Tarbet, is slated for release in November, 2013.
