Frustration!

It's been three weeks since I posted and those have been filled with one frustration after another.  I've been trying to establish a website, and nothing works right!  Now I know I'm probably the second most technologically challenged person in the US ( the first being my husband), but come on!  I'm not stupid!  Honest, I'm not.  I read the directions, do exactly what it says to do, and voila! NOTHING!  NYET! NADA!  NO'SING!

So I'm still working on it, and basically getting no where.  The problem is I've paid for it for a year, so I have to get it up and going somehow. In the meantime, my frustration level is getting lower and lower. :(

Frustration and writing:  how do you deal with that?  What if your characters simply don't do or won't do what you intend for them to do?  One writer I know says when that happens, she just eliminates the character, and puts a new one in place.  Oh wow!  if I did that when one of mine decided to develop a will of her or his own, I'd never get a story written, much less a novel.  I've had characters wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me they don't like the direction I have them going, and I'd better do something different.

Do you get frustrated when your writing seems to be going well, and then you come to a stumbling block in the middle of a scene, or you realize your plot is going off into an entirely new direction that you hadn't intended?  For me, that is frustration at its highest.  I seldom want to delete the scene, yet editing it or rewriting it completely to make it all come together at just the right time seems to take forever.  On the other hand, there have been times when I've found that the stumbling block, whatever it might be, has in fact made me realize the entire scene is either out of place, or really doesn't need to be there at all.

It's when the plot branches off all on its own, that my frustration level reaches its highest point.  I've just had that happen in a steampunk novel ( my first and probably my last !) that I'm working on.  It has suddenly become NOT steampunk. It started off as a steampunk mystery, and has now veered off into a fantasy-mystery.  I have gone back over the beginning again and again, and it just doesn't stay "steampunk."  Yet the mystery, and even the fantasy part, are strong and well-thought out.  So now what? Do we ( this is a collaboration) go back to the beginning and rethink/rewrite that part, or stick with that, and rethink/rewrite the latter part of the beginning and the first of the middle?  At the moment, the only response I have to that question is: G R R R!

How do you deal with frustration in your writing?  Do you leave the story alone for awhile, and when you go back find that things go together  after all?  Do you just bulldoze your way through, determined things are going to go the way you want, no matter what?  Do you settle down, rethink and then rewrite?  Do you delete the scene, dialogue, or the part of the plot that seems destined to disrupt your thought and writing process?  Or do you  take a break, steal some chocolate out of your secret hoard, and just give your muse a rest?  What works best for you when frustration pokes a hole in your creativity?

Until next time,
That's a wrap.