Shannon and Tim Richmeyer wrote:

Hi folks!

Just a thought on 'The Block'. I've found that I block when I want the
story to go one way and the story itself wants to go another. As soon as
I accept the fact that it is going to go the way it wants then the door
opens and off I go again. Forcing it to go the way I want just does not
work...see Windlily chuck 2 days worth of work (all of 3 paragraphs)
because it's wretched. Does this happen to anybody else?

The other thing that will cause me to block is boredom with the
storyline itself. That's a little easier to deal with 'cause I can just
put it up for a while and go work on something else.

Just curious.

Windlily

(dragoncritter@CelestialTemple.com)

Well I wanted to respond to this... anyone familiar with my "Black Ice" 
and other Sailor Moon fanfics (although I'd like to expand my writing 
^_^) knows I've written a lot, and my plots can be very twisted... but 
my first episodes had a ton of changes because some of my original ideas 
just would not work. My best example would be bringing back Jadeite. I 
just couldn't make him fit... he just was not a great General and he did 
not fit the role of the evil mastermind with the will and certainly the 
patience to wage a long campaign of world domination. So, partly to make 
room for other characters and partly to end the dramatic battle in ep. 
4, I offed him... not because I didn't particularly like him, but 
because the plot couldn't be forced. It just wouldn't go in an unnatural 
direction.

I can't say I'm bored with my storyline yet :), but one thing that I 
find to be true is that a lot of good plots take a more "natural" 
course... which is not to say predictable, but with a certain degree of 
storyline logic to it. There's always room for a monkey wrench to throw 
the best-laid plans into a tailspin - just make sure it's the plans of 
the characters, not yours :) If it's going to fall one way, for the most 
part, let it fall. That way you avoid the block because there's always 
(well, at least for a long time ^_^) somewhere else to go with the 
story. An "artificial" plot doesn't work as well. Case in point, a lemon 
without a good story. The person who writes a bad lemon usually sets out 
to write a lemon with a bit of story rather than a story with a lot of 
lemon. So things seem out of place and unnatural.

Looking forward to seeing other people's thoughts on this subject -
Hino Rei