If on a project your find yourself unable to move forward, unable to find anything exciting to incorporate next, it’s likely that your inspirational reserves are empty.
I find this happens in the halfway point for most projects that take a significant period of time. All the ideas and elements that I wanted to implement have been added to the first half, and at this point I won’t know how to continue.
If you try to force it, using the dregs that are left at the bottom of the jar, you’re likely to burn out and ruin all your hard work. It’s hard to bounce back to a project when you’ve smashed it over the head a thousand times with a hammer trying to get it to work.
So it’s time to refresh. It’s time to collect more things to incorporate, steal more, research more, explore more.
It seems a touch counter intuitive to halt in the middle of a project just to go do more research. I’ll be driving around at 90mph and then all of a sudden have to slam the brakes. It can be a little jarring, but I guess that’s how it goes.
A lot of writing advice stems from running through the first draft as fast as you can. Getting to the end of a story so that you can begin the editing process. I find this a little awkward. I don’t like to rush things too much, and whenever I try this the second half is always much, much lamer than the first.
I need something to spin the project in another direction. Something that I wouldn’t have expected, and that sense of discovery generally comes with looking in places that I wouldn’t have expected.
If your research is only with the confines of what you’ve already established, it won’t feel refreshing. It’s only when you marry one topic to another completely separate topic that you find something… different.
So, to get that boost, to find your way out of that endless cycle that can be the middle, look somewhere else
and then take it back with you.