Struggling with Writer's Block: A Raw Look at My Novel Writing Process // Reedsy Weeks 8-9 

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Great vlog! We definitely hit those highs and lows with writing and it can be so frustrating 🥲 but you're working through it all and I'm SO proud of you! I cannot wait for Vampire. This story is going to be so strong by the time it's in readers' hands!

Murphy's Law, amiright? I'm one of the outliers who looks at To Kill a Mockingbird (the book) with a certain degree of frustration. Harper Lee goes off on many, many tangents prior to Tom Robinson's trial, and while some of those tangents shed light of Scout Finch's path to maturity, they also have the tonal feel of a lecture. Horton Foote adapted the story to film with a much tighter focus: the way Scout and Jem see their father, plus the way they see Boo Radley, and that's it but you lose none of the thematic power. There's also a much better balance of showing and telling. Got really lucky on eclipse day because eastern Ontario was in the exact path and the nearest cloud was 3 hours away. Almost any callback to Labyrinth is a win. As far as I know, Jim Henson didn't live to see how Labyrinth grew in its reach. Made more frustrating because he compromised the artistic loftiness he went into the 80s with and tried to make something more audience-friendly than Dark Crystal was. It was a generous middle ground to have the MC be a human actor rather than a puppet, and to have the MC's goal be to come of age through rescuing her baby brother from chaos funko-pops and a codpiece-wielding David Bowie. Labyrinth's box office competition was Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which is just bad luck I guess. The resemblance of Dungeons & Dragons to improv theatre is, for me, too close for comfort. LOL. A huge percentage of work during the day is most certainly the house errands and shit you have to do *after* work. That mental block sucks; hope you feel things pick up soon.