Characters and Writer's Block

I have been attacked by the eternal plague of all otherwise productive writers:

Writer's Block.

I have been unable to go any further in Seafear than Chapter Four. And even that took me almost a month to eke out. To be fair, it's the longest chapter in Seafear thus far, but I have written longer chapters in shorter time-spans. There was a chapter in The Apprentice Wizard-- Chapter Nine, Arius Ashwing-- that was almost 10,000 words long, but I wrote it in less than two days.

To be fair, I had been waiting to get to that chapter for a very, very long time, and the character of Arius surprised me the most about that book. I may have to bring her back in Seafear... But I digress.

Chapter Five is staring me down, looking quite intimidating. I don't know why, it's a chapter I've been looking forward to getting to for a while. I'm about to introduce one of the most important characters in the book. I know very little about her personality, and I'm looking forward to seeing how she works on page.

I have a suspicion she's going to be very, very stubborn, because she does not quite want to be coaxed out of my brain and onto my computer screen. But I can't write Seafear without her, I really can't.

...

Well, I suppose I could cut her out of the story if need be. But that would mean completely gutting Chapter Four, which has some important stuff happen in it, and reroute where my little band of characters go in this book. Besides, I shouldn't cut a character before introducing it unless I am absolutely certain that she adds absolutely nothing to the story, and I think she will.

I hope she will.

She'd better help me get over this damn bout of writer's block.