This morning, I completed a short (<1000 words) scene in one sitting. It was just a short interaction between my hero and a throwaway character to highlight one of the problems she’s facing and reveal some of her character, but I definitely got a feeling of accomplishment for finishing it in a single sitting before work.
The words still aren’t flowing, but whenever I find myself stopping and thinking too hard about what I’m going to say next, I am trying to push myself to just keep going. To say anything, to get words on the page. I can polish them all later, but for now, I have to get the story out, scene by scene.
I do keep running into things that I hadn’t thought about – like in today’s scene, I wanted my hero to criticize a conscript’s appearance in his armor, but I didn’t know what the armor should look like. I struggle to come up with those kinds of details on the fly and they take me out of what little flow I’ve managed to get going. Hopefully, that is something that gets easier with experience.
Overall, though, I think my flow is most interrupted because I think too much about how the scene will appear to someone reading it. I should by trying to picture it in my head as if I’m there watching, and just describe it as I experience it, if I can teach myself to do that.