This hit me as a “No…really?” headline in the news.
Laser surgery in wrong hands can be dangerous
Moving on.
As I try to stay in touch with other writers, whether online, at work or wherever, I hear lots of people talk about having “writer’s block” if they’ve gone a few days without moving ahead with their story. Writer’s block is the idea that something is lodged in your mental pipes, and thus, the words aren’t flowing. Maybe a trickle here or there, but the plot is dead in the water and you can’t seem to break loose no matter how hard you hit your head against the wall. Many people treat this like a disease, a sickness that can leave your storytelling bedridden, sometimes for years at a stretch in more severe cases.
Writer’s block is a nasty thing…so I’ve heard. Honestly? I’ve written for about six years now. I make no claim to writer stardom, seeing as I’ve only got a few short stories out and have yet to land that book deal, but with that in mind, I calculated a little while back that I’ve surpassed the million-words-written milestone, and it’s a rare day where I don’t write at least a thousand words. I’m not saying this all to brag. I certainly know people go at different paces and have different ways of getting their stories written. What I am saying is that I’ve experienced dry spells where the story hasn’t gone smoothly from one spot to the next. I’ve experienced days where I really, really don’t want to sit down and get a few pages done.
But I don’t believe I’ve ever actually experienced writer’s block. I would almost go so far as to say it doesn’t exist unless you choose to let it.
Writer’s block is more where you let yourself get discouraged or so caught up in a knotty plot point that you let yourself rebel against the habit of writing. And once you lose that momentum of writing, it is very hard to start up again. It takes a lot less effort to keep writing, even when you don’t want to, then to start writing again after a week or more of not having done it at all.
I’ve hit this point a lot of times, where the story isn’t going where I want it to, or for some reason, writing is the last thing I want to do that day. There are times where I take a break and let myself recover. But more often, I commit to hitting a certain word count each day (usually 1k) and then do it, no matter what flips off my fingertips. It could be train of thought, or absolute gibberish that I delete once it’s done. I could describe the room I’m sitting in, or what I had for lunch…but I always have the ability to sit down and write. Unless my hands were chopped off, I have no legitimate reason to blame any sort of “block.”
Some people may argue this. They may not use a process anywhere near like mine, but I still believe that they always have the ability and choice to write, no matter how stalled out they feel. It’s often more of an emotional issue than actually losing your writing talent. Recognizing that, and convincing yourself to at least keep the fingers and words inching along, can make all the difference.
I see that smile.
Odd Thomas cures ‘writer’s block’.
Seriously. Every time I feel as if my vocabulary and skill has been flushed down the toilet, I read Odd Thomas (any of the three) and my own style pops back into my head. I am not nearly as talented as Mr. Koontz, but seeing how his stories flow relaxes me enough to get my own creative juices flowing again.
Then again, I’m not a writer. I swear, I’m not.
I love that series as well. And yeah, I’ve found that reading a good book can be a great way to get yourself back into a writing flow. Good technique.
For a lot of people, I think writer’s block is when they don’t know what to write next in the story they’re working on. It isn’t that they can’t write; they simply realise they won’t make any concrete progress on the project at hand.
Robert McKee’s book Story suggested the cure for writer’s block is research. If you really understand the world you’ve created, you’ll know what comes next. If you have no ideas for a new story, research will give you some.
For myself, when I’m stalled, the solution is to stop trying to write the story and sit down and brainstorm it. Eventually, I figure out where things need to go next, and then I can write again.
True. Reworking the plot, or finding yourself written into a corner can be rough. For me, the trick is to keep writing a little bit each day so my mind stays in that mode even while I’m researching or lopping off parts of the story and figuring out what will replace it. I don’t force myself to continue the story until I know where it’s going, but sometimes I’ll just write out my thoughts on how I might resolve the issue.
Just last week I dealt with this kind of mental knot. I had a scene where several nasty characters kinda walk off scene without a fuss, and everyone moves on to the next city. But nothing felt right about the scenario until I took a few days to figure out that, instead of a peaceful parting of ways, there needed to be a big confrontation with some people getting hurt and making the story more tense. Like you said, Goblin, a little research and realizing the violence these characters were capable of helped me figure it out.
It was one of those discouraging points where I considered putting the story aside and starting on a new one altogether, even though I really liked it up to this point. I let myself ease off for a couple of days while I mulled it over, but that doesn’t mean I stopped writing. Momentum is important for me, even if it’s along a detour. Again, just my method.
Anybody ever had Writers Fright?
Besides me, that is.
Writers Fright: you know what you want to write. You even have an editor asking to see your proposal and your sample chapters.
And you’re writing nothing.
Zilch.
Nada.
Instead, you’re cleaning out your refrigerator and your closets and your sock drawer and the trunk of your car . . . but you aren’t writing a single word because you’re scared what you write will be lousy.
The cure?
For me it took my writers group telling me to write something, anything–after watching me procrastinate for six weeks. You know: writing equals butt in chair.
I suspect writer’s fright will strike me as soon as I wind up with a deadline to meet.
I hate deadlines. They don’t make me work any faster; they just make me anxious.