You know what helps when I’m stuck?

Analyzing structure.
It’s not something that tends to occur to me often. I’m more of a sleep-on-it, wake-up-drooling-into-my-pillow-with-the-answer kind of writer. There’s a part of my brain that I seem to access most easily if I’m not completely conscious that seems to understand story better than I do. But when it gets stumped, it’s time to sit around and ask dumb questions about protagonist and antagonist and beginning/middle/end. You know, bring in the analytic brain when the crazed weasel approach to plotting fails. Sometimes I’m writing to see what happens, and it’s often not what I expected when I started the first draft.
And I should be writing.