How to Beat Writer’s Block
Writer’s block. It’s that much-feared condition in which a writer loses the ability to produce new work. It’s a creative slowdown. It can manifest as anything from the inability to come up with new ideas to the inability to produce work at all—sometimes for years. There’s a whole laundry list of well-known authors who have famously struggled with writer’s block (see “Writer’s Block? You’re Not Alone” in this batch of articles). And to be honest, pretty much every writer has had at least a tiny bit of it once in a while.
So for those times when you’re experiencing either a tiny bit or your paralysis stretches into days or weeks (or sometimes longer!), try this baker’s dozen list of tips (with thanks to Novel Writing Help at How to Beat Writer’s Block).
Take Your Time
Writing a novel isn’t a race. Nobody is timing you, so unless you’ve made some die-hard commitment to a publisher, you have the freedom to work at your own pace and enjoy yourself. Paradoxically, the less you worry about reaching the end, the sooner you will get there. Why? Because you won’t be struck down by writer’s block along the way. Start small—and slow. Vow to spend just thirty minutes in your writing room every day, no matter how few words you produce, and your inner muse will likely thrive. And if you still only manage a single paragraph? So what? If it takes you twelve months to produce your masterpiece, that’s great. If it takes you twelve years, that’s great, too. So long as you have fun along the way, who’s counting?
Keep Your Eyes on the Road Ahead
Let’s get real: writing a novel means producing several hundred pages of prose—and that’s enough all by itself to trigger a bad case of writer’s block. And that is precisely why you mustn’t think of writing fiction in those terms. Writing several hundred pages of prose is scary. Writing just one or two pages—or even one or two paragraphs—isn’t scary. So just focus on what you would like to achieve today and ignore all the stuff that’s still down the road, around the corner. You will be amazed how quickly the pages will pile up.
Write in the Right Environment
Writing fiction demands concentration. Either free yourself from distractions at home or find somewhere quieter to work—the park, the library, the car, wherever. Comfort is important, too, so work wherever is most comfortable for you. It is hard to focus on the mind if the body is not relaxed. And remember that even little things can be distractions. Mignon McLaughlin wrote, “There’s only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked into bed for the night, and that’s a writer sitting down to write.”
And Fran Lebowitz summed up the nature of potential distractions well when she wrote, “When I’m supposed to be writing, I clean my apartment, take my clothes to the laundry, get organized, make lists, do the dishes. I would never do a dish unless I had to write.”
Plan What to Say in Advance
Beginners are often tempted to skip through the planning phase of the novel writing process at breakneck speed so they can get to the exciting part: writing a first draft. Big mistake.
Writer’s block often strikes when you try to do two things at once—planning what to say and working out how to say it. Planning is largely a left-brain activity carried out by your inner critic, while drafting the novel is a right-brain artistic one. As you probably know, the right and the left sides of the brain don’t work well together. Plunging straight into the first draft without planning roughly what you will say means you will have to plan at the same time as writing. But if you already have the main details worked out before you write, you only have to worry about the language itself.
Don’t Write Your Novel in Chronological Order
You can, of course, but only if you want to. If your plan is sufficiently detailed, you will have a pretty good idea of what happens in every chapter. And that means you are free to tackle them in any order you choose. If one chapter is threatening to make you come down with a severe case of writer’s block, tackle a more enjoyable one instead—then return to the other one on a different day when you are feeling more in the mood.
Prepare for Tomorrow Today
Think about some manual task—like putting up shelves. It’s much easier to start that task if you have the tools all neatly on hand and the furniture shifted out the way.
It is the same with writing fiction. If you sit down to write without having planned in advance which chapter or which to scene to work on, you can’t hope to achieve anything. But if the day before you planned precisely which scene to tackle and perhaps even wrote the opening sentence (to act as a springboard into the day’s work), you should have a very productive work session. Funny hos that works: Norman Mailer wrote, “If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you’re asking your unconscious to prepare the material.”
Take the Chapter Out for a Walk
Just as sprinters have to mentally prepare for the race ahead, visualizing it in their minds before they have even left the starting blocks, so novelists have to clear their minds of other things. Before writing a draft of a chapter, it is important to put all other cares aside and concentrate instead on the chapter you plan to write. One writer said she likes to take a walk before writing, whatever the weather, and run through the chapter mentally as she goes, picturing it like a movie in her mind’s eye. If other thoughts fight for her attention, she gently pushes them away, like nothing else in the world matters. Then once she sits down she is both mentally and physically prepared.
Work Means Work
If you sit down to write but can’t get started, try a little harder. Whatever you do, don’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. It’s like expecting your lawnmower to start without cranking the cord. Writer’s block is a bully but tends to leave you alone at the first sign of resistance. The first few sentences of the day—even if they are bad sentences—are often the hardest to write. That’s because the muse is still sulking, and the critic is holding the pen. Once you have those opening sentences under your belt, the muse gets interested in what you are doing (or failing to do very well). He kicks the critic out of the writing seat, without you even being consciously aware of it, and—like magic—the words begin to flow.
Write as Badly as You Want
A first draft of a novel is exactly that. It’s a draft—something that will end up in the recycling bin. Many famous writers are on record as saying that they have to revise their drafts five, ten, or even fifteen times before they are happy. Once you realize that you will probably not be terribly enthusiastic about the quality of the first draft, all the pressure dissipates. All you need to do is simply fill pages with words—raw material that can later be made to look more pretty. Accepting in advance that what you write as a first draft is going to take a lot of polishing during the revision stage gives you the freedom to simply write and not give a second thought to the quality of the language.
Do Something Different
If you are tired of writing the first draft, try revising one of the chapters you have already drafted. If there’s a time you just can’t bear to face another blank page, face a page you have already filled with words! Doing some kind of work on your novel is better than doing no work at all. Just make sure that the next day, when you will hopefully be feeling more energized, you get back to the drafting, even if you only manage to draft a paragraph or two.
Be Easy on Yourself
If you reach the point where you can’t face writing a first draft or even revising previous drafts (and we all have days like that), take a day or two off. As long as every day doesn’t turn into a day off, you’ll be fine. After all, there is more to life than writing novels. And you’ll be itching to get back to your story before too long.
Learn to Look Forward to Writing by Setting LOW TARGETS
Until you get paid for doing it, writing novels is—or should be—more like a hobby. Even after you are published it should still be like a hobby, because you do it for the love of doing it. (If you do not love doing it, go do something else. There are more reliable ways of making money.) You wouldn’t dread a day’s fishing or a round of golf. You wouldn’t dread an evening in the attic building your model railway. Why would you dread novel writing? The answer, of course, is that writing a novel is sometimes challenging—not least the challenge of filling hundreds of sheets of blank paper with thousands of words. But guess what? Dreading a writing session is a sure-fire way to stifle your creativity. Here’s the deal: the prospect of writing is always much worse than actually doing it. Thinking about writing a tough scene can make you groan when the alarm clock rings in the morning. But when you actually get going and the ideas start flowing, you wonder what all the fuss was about. The best way to overcome this advance fear of a day’s work is to set yourself ridiculously low targets. Instead of aiming to write the entire chapter that day, aim to write the first two paragraphs only. I don’t mean drafting and revising those paragraphs until they are as perfect as you can make them. I mean drafting them only and then taking the rest of the day off.
And now for the bonus in the baker’s dozen:
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
Nobody is forcing you to write a novel. Never forget that. If you wanted, you could quit right now and go take up golf or jigsaw puzzles or crochet instead. But you won’t quit writing, because writing is something you want to do with a passion.
Nobody is going to tell you that it will always be easy, because it won’t. But writing must never become a chore. Always approach your writing with a positive mindset, filled with the creative spirit, and infused with passion. And that should send writer’s block on its way.
(Photos: top, Wordpress; road, Discourse; woman at wall, Wordpress; beach, Cruise Critic)