Number 7 is great - try it now!

Yesterday I burbled about Maggie's list of 11 things you can do to get your writing going from a bad patch. Well, the one that resonated with me most was number 7, reproduced below. After weeks of banging my head against a creative brick wall that suggestion got me going again. Within a few hours I'd written several thousand words, plotting a way forward for my mentoring project. My mentor read it, came back with some brilliant suggestions on how to improve it but also praised how much my new idea was working. Two weeks ago I was down and depressed; today I've got my mojo working and all's well with the word. So, here's that number 7 in full - use it well!

7) This one is evil but fantastic: open a new file and write the thing again, without looking at your current draft, no matter how many times you've rewritten it. Oh, so evil! Because you'll hate it and you'll be so mad and then, oh my goodness, you write something SO GREAT! Because you've been working on that story for so long now, you're so ready to write that thing! You're a pro at writing that thing, but you're not letting yourself write it, only rewrite it.

It's like you've been practicing a piece of Bach. Only you recorded your very first time through, and you've been tweaking that recording all this time. Play it again! Write it again! Let your characters talk. They're sick of having the same conversation over and over. What would they do if they had the chance to live that scene over again?