Don't ever ignore those messages.

There's an article appearing on this site dealing with Writer's Block.  And the one item I stressed most of all was the subconscious mind. As I pointed out, this is the place where all of our fears, memories, inner thoughts, insecurites and what not are stored. This article pertained to those periods when authors/writers cannot produce a page of copy. It mostly has to do with mistakes in the work that the author/writer is unable to see, but they're there and the knowledge is stored in the subconsicous. Until these mistakes are handled, it might be impossible to continue with your writing. This is where the use of the subconscious mind comes in.

I've recently been stumped on a new novel I'm writing, and it's not as though these are totally new characters in a new location. This work is the third in a series I'm writing, so other than dealing with a new plot line, what was the problem? I've written 13 pages, approximately 4,000 words and could go no further. I checked for mistakes in time frame, characterization, the whole nine yards. Since there's only 13 pages, the mistake shouldn't have been difficult to find. And yet, nothing jumped off the pages to show I'd done something wrong and could not continue until it was fixed.

This is where the subconscious comes in: Last night I had a dream in which I was speaking to someone--don't  know who--and that person yelled at me. Told me the reason I couldn't write anymore had to do with my insecurities about the novel. "You cannot finish it because you're afraid it won't be as good as the others." That was exactly it. I'm afraid this novel won't be as good as the other 13 novels I've had published. And I certainly don't want to be a hack that just churns out novels for the sake of writing.  So I'm listening to my subconscious. And I'll watch that the quality doesn't slip.