Should I Work On My Weakest Area?

The main reason I am only a co-author is that I use my best friend to compensate for my weakest area, the conceptual side of storytelling. I'm a good writer, but I'm not a fantastic storyteller.

I suffer from blank-slate syndrome: when I sit down to write something without a detailed plan, I find myself at a loss. Plot hooks, on the other hand, I can do. If I know what the plot's going to be, I can draft it up no problem.

In contrast, my friend is a visionary and a storyteller. He invents interesting characters and makes their personalities bounce off of one another, he uses vivid images and re-visits themes. In other words, he makes all the pieces fit together.

That is a skill that I have never demonstrated to myself that I have. Even in collegiate studies, when I was faced with writing a story, I resorted to looking at science fiction artwork created by an artist friend and writing stories based on the setting they depicted. The stories I wrote, moreover, I did not consider that their pieces fit well together, regardless of the skill with which I made them.

In the discussion that led up to the early termination of my last solo project (the one with IP difficulties), my co-author suggested, as he has many times, that I strike out on my own. This time, though, he specifically suggested that instead of compensating for my weakness, I should develop it in the hopes of making it not-weak.

This is a difficult question without a clear-cut answer: should I work on my weakest area? There are two basic approaches to this question. 1) Because it is my weakest area, my time is better spent doing what I am naturally good at. This is the approach I have favored. The other approach is this: 2) Skills at which you are weak should be developed. This is a costly approach, but the idea is that, afterward, the weakness will be gone.

This over-simplified description is leaving out non-measurables such as the individual's capacity to learn the weak skill, the start-up cost (money/time) of the learning, and the availibility of compensation aids. The superior answer seems very situational. I don't know what's better for me in my situation, but at this point I feel that my hand has been forced, and my next step must be to select a project and begin work.

Organize Your Brain

Even though I find drafting to be a stymieing task, I recognize its enormous importance - the revision process, which far exceeds drafting in clarity, cannot take place at all without the groundwork laid out by drafting.

One of the many ways that I get writer's block when I'm drafting is when I'm not really sure about what I'm trying to do. I'll intuitively stop mid-paragraph when part of my brain has realized that I "just don't know where I'm going with this," and then I'll be stuck. The word-spicket valve closes, and I can't move forward. There's only one way out of this situation for me: I have to think.

To get past this kind of writer's block, I have to get up, get away from my computer, and devote concentration and effort to power my imagination. I'm a particularly visual person and a visual writer. My brain, in the words of an artist friend of mine whose brain works the same way, plays "movies" in my head when I imagine things. (His sister's brain, he says, is different: it thinks in words, like reading a book, which is nothing like my experience.) These "movies" in my head are the only way I'm able to figure out the details of what I'm trying to narrate in my story. When I have this conceptual or imagination-starved writer's block, knowing what I'm trying to narrate is the only way to fix it.

My spouse is training to run a 10K foot race in a few weeks, and I've been joining her on a bicycle. Going out on the roads with her this past week has been good for my process because it forces me into a situation I both can't escape and in which my brain is freed up from writing so that I can finally get some imagination/conceptual work done. In other words, getting out of my apartment gives me a chance to think about what I'm trying to do. The other day I was just chattering to her while she ran about the last writer's block I had and what the problem was, and suddenly it hit me in a eureka-style flash how I could solve my characters' fast-approaching logistical problem.

Prior to that moment, I had been unable to figure out how I could get my protagonists from point A to point B without re-writing everything I'd already done. This was a problem that was impossible to solve when I was at my computer, staring at my text, trying to draft and think at the same time. I devised a solution very quickly when I was able to devote 100% of my concentration to it.

Beyond the brain benefits of getting out of the house, I also recommend exercise to everyone I meet (not just creative recluses!) because of the incredible quality-of-life benefits. Exercise encourages your body not only to regenerate and maintain your physical health, but also to release endorphins, which truly make a difference in how you feel. A sedentary lifestyle will degrade your ability to create, because your quality of mind depends on your quality of body. Paradoxically, expending energy on physical exercise gives you more energy to use (by prompting your body to expand your reserves).