Some of you may have noticed that I have not been contributing as frequently as Nancy and Roger have on this blog.
Granted, I have been busy as Editor of The Free Choice e-zine (http://www.thefreechoice.info/) as well as being the Associate Editor At Large for a fledgling comic book company that unfortunately I cannot "officially" discuss...
Yet.
I can tell you that I am overseeing five different series in some capacity, most of the time as full editor of that title, and that our productions will start hitting the marketplace between Thanksgiving 2009 and Spring 2010.
But in what I laughingly call my "spare" time (as the name suggestion I gave Nancy for this blog implies) I do try to write as well, among other things.
Yet when I put my mind to it, I just cannot seem to come up with anything to post here.
Therefore, I thought I would devote a bit of time and space to discuss what to do about writer's block.
Now regardless of what medium/genre you are working with words in, there is bound to come a time every once in a while that you hit a (hopefully momentary) snag wondering: "What next?"
The first thing you should do is get up and take a short break. Just walk away from the project long enough to stretch your legs, maybe use the restroom and get a drink.
Whatever you need to do to clear your head.
Then come back to whatever you were working on and see if you can pick up where you left off.
If this does not work, then take a slightly longer break. Work on something else, even if it is not another writing project.
BUT ALWAYS SAVE YOUR WORK IN PROGRESS.
Even if you do not immediately come back to it does not mean you want to lose whatever you have already created.
It is always possible that refocusing your thoughts in another direction will free up the creative process when you turn your attention back to wherever you stopped last in the previous project.
If not, we move on to the next suggestion: involve a friend.
Now I have heard writing called a solitary position/profession, but it doesn't have to be.
Every writer has at least one true friend who is willing to help out when asked, whether it be as a sounding board, a personal critic, kibitzer, or whatever you might need.
Don't be bashful about admitting you've hit a stumbling block and want to hear what they might think.
A fresh voice/opinion can always come up with a perspective/thought you did not.
Now there is no guarantee that your friend will come up with the "perfect" solution. But their suggestion might lead you to the "right" one.
Do note the quotation marks around those words, for every creative writing problem is different and the solution to one situation is not always the "ideal" one for the next.
Now if by some cruel twist of fate none of the above ideas have yielded positive results yet, DON'T GIVE UP!
You can always try to start fresh again tomorrow, but never give up on your writing!
2 comments:
There are many reasons for writer's block. No one solution works for everyone. Stepping away for a while, does help.
I have the grand advantage that I post story ideas every day, and have sort of broken myself of most of the problems involving facing the "white paper" as many authors suffer.
I don't usually run into problems of not having ideas, as I come up with more than I am using and I post every day.
AS you can see, I am a special case study on writer's block. My fun of writing daily story ideas gets rid of a lot of problems other authors have.
When I have noticed true writer's block in myself, It has always ended up being that the story was going some place it did not need to go. Usually some path that would cause all sorts of writing that was not needed.
An example, I wrote a rough draft of a story where a magical cat kept appearing at a space station where no can could possibly come to. I had where a ship arrived and the crew came to visit. The cat was supposed to check out each person to see if they were a better caretaker than my main character. At that moment, My story stopped dead, I could not move it a word farther forward. when I changed the ship to a robotic ship supply ship, The story instantly flowed to completion. The writer's block came from my not wanting to do all those scenes of different people and their interaction with the cat. Instead, he had the choice to get onto the ship and leave, and could not bring himself to abandon the cat, even though it could appear and disappear from and to somewhere.
All my writer's blocks followed a similar pattern.
As I said, I am a special case so it is something to consider on top of other things.
***
Many people have writer's block where they can only write when they are excited about the story.
I read a piece where an author said that he plodded through his stories whether he was excited about it or not. The stuff he wrote while excited was no better than the stuff he slogged through.
If your writer's block is because you lost your excitement for the story, trudge on. Getting the story on paper is the most important part. You can edit it into a better quality later.
From my experience, there are two main types of writer's block.
Blank sheet phobia is where you are sitting down to write something - really anything - and no words will come out. That's because you don't have a clue what you want to write about, or how to go about finding something that tickles the muse. Best thing I found for that is look at some interesting pictures or read some poetry that captivates me, and then something will suggest itself. Mybe a bit of mood music too, something that either melody or lyrics talks to me about what kind of writing I want to do. I've worked my way out of blank page phobia many times that way.
Second kind of blockage is what I call 'the doldrums' and I went through that a few times while working on my first book. That's where you get involved in a long-term project and suddenly you are slogging through the scene-filling middle parts, where it is building up to the climax. You no longer have the excitement of just having started out on something new and fresh with all kinds of possiblities, because now you are kind of locked into a storyline that seems to go on and on... And it doesn't have that rushing buildup feeling near the climax, where you know you are SO CLOSE to that turning point moment and then rapidly downhill toward the end. This kind of block is a lot harder to deal with, and I think is the reason a lot of people who start out writing with fervor wind up chucking the manuscript into a drawer and finding another hobby. Writing is hard work, it's tough to see a big project through. My book took the better part of 4 years to write, and it sat for weeks on end at times while I was trying to figure out what to say next to get to where I wanted to go. Bottom line is you have to believe in what you are doing, and really like the story enough to persevere when it is just so much work. It's OK to take a break for a bit, then go back and reread what you have with fresh eyes. I also found it helpful to write about what I was doing, even if I got no helpful responses. I often worked out a plot point that had been bugging me just by writing about it.
You can write all the short stuff you want, but nothing says conviction better than seeing a long term project through. That is the point where you turn the corner from casual writer to author. A writer is a hobbyist who enjoys the process for the fun of it, but an author puts a story world together from beginning to end because it is a passion, and that includes gritting your teeth and staying motivated to work right through the hard parts and beyond.
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