quinnandersonwrites:

avelera:

If you have writer’s block because of a certain idea or passage in your story, one thing I suggest is to work with a second document for discards. Every substantial story I write is written across at least 2 documents – one “main” story, and one for notes. 

The notes document contains everything not in the main document. That’s where I throw things like deleted passages, even if it’s just half a sentence because I may figure out later that I actually said it better the first time. I also put notes or even whole scenes for later plot points there, basically ideas as they come to my head that I might want to add. It takes the pressure off the main document to know nothing gets permanently thrown away. 

It’s also a place where I can free-write if I haven’t quite come up with the right wording for something, and then I can take out the best parts and put them in the main doc. It’s a document that allows me to make mistakes without wasting my effort or time, or permanently altering the pristine “real” manuscript with a random idea that ends up not really working out.

This is pretty common writing advice but I thought I’d throw it out there for anyone who feels stuck.

This is really useful advice. I do this as well. I write the “actual” manuscript in a word document, and then in OneNote, I have a tab open for notes, plot bits, dialogue, and things I’ve deleted that I might need later.