Being Stuck by Sinclair Jayne March 13

The Window welcomes the charming and talented Sinclair Jayne today, talking about a subject every writer knows and dreads.

Shout out to the fun and clever Liz for letting me crash her blog this week.

Have you ever been stuck?

I believe it’s more common than any of us want to admit as many women fall into the trap of thinking we need to be some sort of version of Ed Sheeran singing Perfect as we juggle all the spinning elements of our lives-work, and yet sometimes something drops. Or everything does. Maybe even us.

I was emailing with Liz about the feeling of being creatively stuck a couple of years ago on the last book or my Misguided Masala Matchmaker series—Stealing Mr. Perfect. Completely unexpected. I used to be a teacher and taught creativity workshops. I’d researched creativity in writing. I knew the tricks, and then I hit this wall I’d heard about, but had imagined I would never hit it hard. And if I did bump my head or toe on the wall. I would take in a deep breath and walk around or awkwardly clamber over. 

At first, I was more curious than worried. Why this book? Why these characters? I knew my hero and heroine. My heroine had been a main supporting character in the previous three books in the series. She was the driver, the matchmaker and yes, she was loving, enthusiastic and always misguided. She found or stumbled into the perfect match for her family through judgment errors, luck and stubborn misreading of a situation or person. She was lovable and funny. Rani Kapoor’s HEA was supposed to be a slam dunk, and yet I stumbled and missed the basket three times until I was starting to freeze up and fantasizing about throwing my computer out of a window and applying for a job at Starbucks. 

I wrote and revised. Reworked. Started over and over and over again. I Conferenced with my editor and consulted friends. But what I really wanted to do, and what I started practicing was the email to my editor and publisher saying that I didn’t want to write the book. It wasn’t working. The series would work better as a trio. Totally unprofessional and since I’d argued that Rani needed her story to wrap up the series when we were discussing a three or four book contract, my fantasizing about backing out felt like a limp white flag.

I was stuck. And as a developmental editor who has held the hands of many authors who have a crisis of faith and become stuck, I was ashamed of even thinking about not writing the book. It was something I’d never imagined not doing. Writing a book is a journey, a thrilling honor, an adventure, a joy and yeah, sometimes a teeth-grinding frustration in gorging on humble pie. But not doing it? Inconceivable. 

My mind spun round and round. What to do? What was my next step and how did I take it? What finally shoved me back on my feet and out of the ditch was when I imagined telling my daughter—then a college freshman who is absurdly talented and driven and who’d not whined once when she lost several months of her senior year performances, rituals and activities and who was starting college on Zoom--I was giving up. I had flown my resiliency flag my whole life, and it was definitely a theme when I raised my children. When Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance came out, I read it, gifted it and wouldn’t shut up about it.

I used to teach with someone who often intoned ‘suck it up butter cup.’ And I knew that I had to take a new approach—the fourth attempt to write Stealing Mr. Right. During another Zoom with my fabulously brilliant and creative editor and author Kelly Hunter, I finally realized why I was stuck, when she was trying to guide me in a different direction that felt wrong all the way to my fingertips. She argued passionately that the theme of the book was “What is love.” And that’s when I realized that the book—yes, a romance about a matchmaker who falls in love, wasn’t really about love. It was about identity. Rani’s and my hero’s. 

That’s why I couldn’t write it. I was writing the wrong book. Rani had been defined by others her whole life, and her growth arc was about finally coming into herself. Gaining confidence. Defining herself and taking full agency of her life. Jasminder has been so alienated from his culture and family that he is disconnected from himself and life and only has his career. By setting off separately to learn about themselves, they can love themselves and then fall in love. It was so sudden and so clear that I abruptly ended the meeting, opened the new file and began to write starting on page one. One month later I hit save and send. Happy. Relieved and proud because the book sang. 

Grinding it out might not seem inspirational, but it is effective and gritty. Being emotionally stuck requires, I’ve discovered, a bit more finesse, and self-kindness along with support. When my mother passed last year after several years of decline and illness, I felt totally spent. I was scheduled to attend a writer’s retreat a couple of weeks after she died and vacillated about going. But my husband strongly encouraged me to go as did the three other authors I was meeting. And spending time talking story, talking lives, family and goals while walking in the gorgeous nature that surrounds and imbues Canmore, Canada, soothed and inspired me.  And when I was brainstorming the plot for the fourth book in a new series The Coyote Cowboys of Montana, I felt devoid of ideas. I admitted how empty my brain and heartfelt—how I was again stuck. It felt scary admitting that, and yet they bounced ideas with me for The Cowboy Charm, which released last month. “Use your feelings,” Author, Publisher and bestie Jane Porter advised. “Let them drive the story.” 

Usually when I write, I’m in my imagination. Sure, I’ll grab a snippet from something I read or hear about on occasion, but mostly it’s me and the wild animals rampaging through my head. Harnessing the grief, the exhaustion, the frustration and the disquieting giddiness of relief that the worst had finally happened life, sounded scary. What would happen? Doom and gloom. And yet, The Cowboy Charm was one of the easiest books I’d ever written. It flowed and my hero and heroine, both of whom were at uncomfortable turning points in their lives danced. Even when there was heaviness, The dialog, the visuals, the secondary characters shone with light. I was having fun. My hero was having fun, and my heroine, who was as stuck as I had been, found her groove and fun again.

It was freeing to face something hard head on, not in a stoic way, but in a ‘let’s play’ way. I hope I can seize the chance again. But I do know that after navigating two deeply different but equally challenging moments of being stuck creatively and emotionally, I have more confidence that future me will grab the challenge rather than duck it or pretend it will go away. 

Have you had a moment where you really felt stuck? How did you rise to the challenge? A response will be chosen randomly to win a signed and print copy of the two books that illustrate my most recent moments of becoming unstuck. You can DM or email me at authorsinclairjayne@gmail.com.

A former journalist and middle school teacher, Sinclair Sawhney lucked into a job as a developmental editor with Tule Publishing nearly ten years ago and continues to enjoy working with authors. As Sinclair Jayne, she’s published over twenty-five romance novels and counting. She loves her cowboys, small towns and HEAs. When she’s not writing or editing, she’s often hosting wine tastings with her husband of over twenty-seven years in the tasting room of their small vineyard Roshni, which means light filled, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Cheers.