I'm not talking about my ripped stomach or a peach when I say "hard in the middle". I don't have either at the moment, a fact which causes me great sadness. I love peaches and I'm sure my wife would love my having a ripped stomach.
No. I'm talking about a phenomenon that I've experienced in my art career including painting, graphic and web design, songwriting and fiction writing: that of the difficulty that shows up in the middle of any artistic process.
No matter how inspired our idea, no matter how energetic the start, no matter how tight the pre-planning, the middle twists around, tempts one to the outside edge where things get unfocused and thin. The middle is where the shapelessness of tedium allows the mind to wander. The middle is where certainty and new intelligence -- what has revealed itself to us in the process of producing art -- overlap and turn into what seems at the time a hopeless mud.
Push through and have faith in the original idea. Your abilities will rewarded with a finished work worth the effort. Once you've witnessed this magic for yourself, you'll have a success in your pocket on which to build more and more successes. For some, one time will be enough to get him over future humps; for others, many victories will have to be won before he can push past the middle point on his own.
This push is similar to running headlong into a forest with the goal of making it out alive on the other side. You enter thinking you'll go straight in, reach halfway and go straight back out. But once you're in you realize trees are in the way, there's an impassible cliff or a swift river. You have to change your plan. You might even have to rethink your path to the point you feel you're so far off track you'll never complete the trip. But the writing process is complex terrain. You'll find you've overestimated the obstacle or it will turn out the long backtrack takes you to a subplot you hadn't planned. That middle point wasn't a problem. As cliche as it sounds, it was an opportunity. More importantly, it was necessary.
The fact that there's not always a gun to your head when it comes to writing makes a middle push more difficult because, when its all said and done, one doesn't HAVE to get to a finishing point. However, a writing life is a craft. You only succeed if you practice the whole game, not only the beginning of the game until you tire or start losing. Games can be won from behind; stories can be completed despite difficulty.
Saying this doesn't offer the writer much specific advice. What specifically does one do faced with the sticky middle? My advice risks sounding boring but again, rule number one holds true: Keep writing. Solutions you might be tempted to think about for days usually solve themselves in minutes in the writing. Not specific enough? If you need an exact first step, I give you this:
Typically, identifying and solving the largest problem in front of you is all you have to do. Identify and solve. When we look at a work, no matter the medium. We're either satisfied (and that means we're finished) or we're not satisfied.
What leads us to feel unsatisfied? Something is not answered or it's answered in a wrong or distasteful way.
The good news is we can, with practice, learn to identify that the one main problem. Multiple problems group themselves together like the funny short characters in films or cartoons who stand on one another's backs wearing a trench coat in an effort to fool another, usually menacing character. Look for the one problem, solve it and move on to the next one. Eventually, all the problems will be solved and you'll be satisfied with your work. You'll be finished.
