Throwing people off balconies

There comes a time in every writer's lives, where you bang your head against the keyboard and start rolling it around, hoping that maybe some random spark of inspiration will suddenly jump out of your brain and into the keys, like an overenthusiastic six year old trying to be an Olympic diver.

I have these regularly. And the trouble is that they're like playing a musical instrument or driving. Once you've stopped doing it for a few days, getting back into it is like shoving a boulder up a hill.

I hate moments like this. I have a chapter due out tomorrow that I know I'm not going to finish, because my characters (Bakura in particular) are being as bland as a water and cardboard sandwich, and frankly, its a duel and they are always hard to write. Life points, attack and defence points and different metaphors for people smirking are rolling around my head like my brother's Combee on pixi-stixs. My progress board on my bookshelf is staring at me with its blank white gaze, waving the words "Chapter 10 duel" tauntingly in front of my face, along with all my other bloody chapters and stories that aren't finished.

Fics for the Anti-Cliche and Mary-Sue Elimination Society are also waiting to be done, but frankly, despite my enthusiasm earlier this week, I can't get excited about my next big Society fic any longer, purely because there's another unfinished story that I'm collabing with someone, that has been sitting in the way for the past year. I can't write ahead of myself effectively. I have to have a sense of progression when I write - that the last bit is done and I can move on to the next bit, otherwise my flow is ruined. This is also why I can't chunk write. Because like most writers, I'm imperfect. I write, then I change my mind, then I redo things. Its the only way my head keeps everything straight. Doing bits and pieces out of order just confuses me, and I forget what I've changed and what I haven't. I also have another collab that I've been working on for my Oneshot a Month challenge, but that's fallen on the back burner too.

Added to which, I now have a piece of smut that I promised my boyfriend in exchange for some writing help. If I write it in this kind of mood, I'd probably end up throwing all the characters off a balcony, which last I checked, was not conducive to helping them achieve an orgasm.

And that's just the fanfiction. I'm aching to go back to my novel, or last years NaNo, or start one of the two ideas I have floating around in my head as potential Camp NaNoWriMo pieces. But I can't write feeling guilty and knowing there's all this other stuff I've got to finish first. I have to get the other projects done and out of the way before I start on anything big. Otherwise its like starting work on that essay that's due in a month, when you've got an unfinished piece of coursework due in tomorrow.

The pounding headache that I've had all day isn't helping matters either.

So instead of trying to find inspiration in some form, or power through and just accept that my writing will be crap if I'm in this mood but that its better than nothing, I'm instead bitching on my blog in an effort to prevent a layer of dust forming on it.

Is it working?

...

Hell if I know. Guess we'll find out in a day or two if I get this stupid duel up.