Moira Rand Books

Conquering Bad Writing Days: A Writer’s Guide – Or Not

There are good writing days. The kind where words roll like butter off a hot knife, metaphors practically pirouette onto the page, and you finish a scene so perfect you want to frame it, kiss it, and whisper:

“Yes, I am in fact, an author goddess.”

And then there are days like… today.

The days when your eyes blur halfway through a sentence, you’ve typed the same word seventeen times in the space of two paragraphs, and your once-trusty dictionary is suddenly your mortal enemy. Every synonym looks wrong. Every sentence sounds like it was chewed by a goat and spat back onto the page.

I have become the three-letter word queen.
“And.”
“But.”
“Yet.”
The whole kingdom ruled by conjunctions and confusion.

Metaphors? A myth.
Seamless sentences? Gone.
The world? One big grey blob of boring.

Not even coffee can save me now. (And believe me, I’ve tested the limits of how much caffeine a body can legally withstand without becoming part hummingbird or giving my cardiologist a heart attack.)

It’s a cruel fall, really. One day you’re basking in the glow of your fabulous self-praise, floating on a cloud of author awesomeness after writing a perfect scene that makes you weep with joy at your own brilliance. The next, you’re hunched at the keyboard muttering:

“Why does every sentence look like it was assembled by a deranged toddler with a glue stick?”

Nothing, and I mean nothing, will bring your delusional arse back down to earth faster than a bad chapter.

But here’s the secret:
Even the bad words, the boring words, the clunky goat-chewed sentences… they matter. They’re the groundwork. The compost heap where brilliant crap eventually sprouts.

So tomorrow, I’ll drag myself back to the page.
Today, though?
I’m sulking with my thesaurus closed and my crown of three-letter words firmly in place. A box of Chockits (type of caramel-chocolate cookies) firmly under one armpit.

Long live the queen.

Stubby’s Interruption:
Take a break, mate. Watch one of your shows, do the ogling at those brothers who hunt things and chase their missing father or whatever. Reset, because if you don’t, we get the backlash. And trust me, no one wants that. Not even me.

It’s either you reset… or I end up drinking out of the south wing toilet. It’s embarrassing.
Please don’t make me.

– Stubby

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