Beat the Block: It's About the Tools

This article was originally written for Fairfield County Writers, now Full Coverage Writers and published in three parts. I've left it in segments.

Writer's block. Combined, those two innocent words become one of the most dreaded phrases in the writer's vocabulary. Say it out loud and grown (writing) men blanch; the kindest of (writing) women may snarl.

Some writers claim to never be blocked. The rest of us either envy or disbelieve them. I think their definition is different. I believe we all run into walls at times. I've certainly been blocked enough that I've found some ways around that dang Block o' Nothing in my path. Some of these ways may just help you too.

First and foremost, rule number one. Place your butt in the chair! You can't write if you aren't there.

Now. If your behind is in the chair and you're still unable to write--let's have a look.

Maybe you don't have anything to write. Or you have something wonderful to write, but you don't know how to start. You have a great opening scene, but you don't know what happens next. How can you call yourself a writer if you never write?

Deep breaths. You are a writer. You can do this.

If you don't have any stories waiting to bloom--ask yourself where you get your ideas. In my experience, most writers start in one of four places: with character, with setting, with idea, or with plot. So go hunting. Think of someone else's character that intrigued you, or that you feel that writer got wrong. What would you do with her? Think about that--then steal her. It's perfectly legal as long as you change her. Or flip through Flixster until you find an intriguing face, and make up a story for it.

Setting--Holly Lisle says this is how she works. You could try her method and draw a map. There are no mistakes--that perfectly round lake you drew? Come up with a reason it's perfect. Random squiggle by accident? Make up a reason a line of hills appeared there. Who lives on one side of that line? Who lives on the other side? Or go look at pictures. Pixdaus is great for this. Setting is not my strongest point, so I spend a lot of time finding pictures that 'belong' so I know what my world looks like.

Idea--so you've got a great idea. Who will act it out for you? Will your main character exemplify your idea, or work against it? What setting will enable you to write this idea? Investigating the dark side of society won't work well on a mountaintop in Tibet. Cast widely. Brainstorm. Don't go with the first answer. Narrow it down until you find what you need.

Plot--so you want to write a story about a lonely misanthrope who finds love? Great! Now you have to find that misanthrope. You could follow some of the suggestions for finding ideas for characters above. Or start with setting. Is he lonely in the middle of a city, or on a mountaintop? Is it romantic love or paternal love, or a platonic bond with a sentient tree?

What about when you have something wonderful, but don't know how to write it? You wrote a great scene and can't get beyond it? It may be that is a different kind of block. That one's made of fear. You've got this terrific idea, this awesome scene. What if you mess it up?

You won't. In the beginning--and yes, in the middle and in the end too--a lot of block is just fear of making a mistake. So let me tell you--you can't. Thomas Edison didn't fail ten thousand times before he made a light bulb. He found ten thousand ways that didn't work, each one bringing him closer to the one that did. You'll do the same (and it probably won't take you ten thousand tries!)

In the next segment, I'll talk more about beginnings, discuss ways to trick that inner critic into shutting up, and look at some ways writer's block attacks.

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Writer's block. It's pernicious. Its sources are many, as are its manifestations. It may drive you to headdesking, to obsessively playing videogames, to cleaning things that have not seen a dustcloth in decades. But the defining characteristic is this--you want to write, you try to write, and you can't.

Remember rule number one: is your behind firmly planted before your work? Yes? Then let's move on.

In the last segment I mentioned that a frequent source of block is fear, and I tried to reassure. Try these methods if the frontal attack didn't work.

First, if you're thinking about publishing, stop it. That's for later. The first draft is yours. This is your chance to, as Ms. Frizzle says, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

Easy for me to say? Yes. But here's how to do it.

Try a new font. Or a new color. Some writers type white on white. Can't fix it if you can't see it. I don't like that one--I make more typos when I can't see them. Or I think I do--and I can't ignore the fear that my hard-won words will be incoherent. So I use a different, but legible, font. Comic Sans, usually. Yes, some hate it--for exactly the reasons I use it. The font is cutesy, it's sloppy, and it's impossible to take seriously. This first draft is for me--it's my time to take chances with plot and character, to wander off on tangents to see what's there, to write a messy scene that says vaguely what I need it to and then move on.

Try your hand at handwriting. What I can't bring myself to type, I can often get down on paper. I like to grab a notebook and a pen and go to a fast-food restaurant at a quiet time of day. Less expensive than a coffee place, and a greater variety of people--who come in and out faster so if someone does distract me, it doesn't last. (Also, I have a kid and McDonald's has a play place. They have also greatly improved their coffee.) Between the change in scenery and the change in method, I can nearly always get unstuck. Another advantage is that I can write spare, knowing I'll flesh it out when I type it in. Once the bones are down, I can get the rest.

Set your muse free with a freewrite. This is often an answer to the lack of ideas, or direction, as well. Just close your eyes and type. Or don't, but type. No censoring. No thinking. Just go. If you type "I want meatloaf" fifty times in a row before something else comes out, so what? No one ever has to see. It's a freewrite. No big deal. Even if you're a vegetarian.

Write in another file. Often I have a manuscript file and a working file. If I'm hesitant about where I'm going, it's a lot easier to change direction in the working file than to go back to the manuscript and try to spot where I went wrong.

As for don't know where to start block--that's the easiest one of all. Just start. You'll know later if you started in the right place, and you'll be able to fix it. What, did you think you could just get it exactly right the first time so you wouldn't have to edit?

Your inner critic is that voice that tells you that your writing isn't good enough. That your plot isn't twisty enough, your characters deep enough, your idea shiny enough, your setting memorable enough.

It lies.

While you'll probably never be fully rid of it, there is a way to drive it off at times. Choose a mantra, and repeat it as necessary. Here are some good ones.

It's a first draft.

I can get messy.

Mistakes are fun!

I'll fix it later.

Write! Else the world will end!

Okay, that last line may be a bit much. The point is, fear grows when you let it win. Take it on, take it down, and get back to writing. Remember--you can go around the block if you can't get through it. Don't give up. You're a writer. By definition, your head is hard enough for the job.

In the next segment, I'll talk about middle and end writer's block and especially what to do when you're stuck in sight of the end.

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Writer's block. Are you sick of it? Good. Let's take it down.

Is your butt in the chair? Well done.

Now. The middle of the story. Often called the muddle, with good reason. People get stuck just because they can't see the end. They've been in there so long they've forgotten a time before the story and can't imagine a time after. If you know the next step, this is an easy answer--just push on.

Maybe you don't know where to take your plot next. So stop looking at your plot. Look at your characters, your setting, or your idea. These four concepts are cornerstones of your story, and while your talent--and thus their strength--may not be equally distributed, at least three of them need to be there. Your story can thrive despite being triangular. It can't survive being flat.

So ask questions. What would your character do now? Well, what wouldn't he do? Why? What happens if he takes the gun/the pill/the train? What if it snows? What if a rogue wave hits? What if another character illustrates your lead's misanthropy?

Freewriting can help. Sitting around thinking may soon lead to sitting thinking of something else, so use a freewrite to keep on track. Or get up and role-play the scene. Go for a walk with a notebook. Take a shower with bath-crayons (made of colored soap) nearby lest inspiration strike.

Have you fought your way to the middle only to discover you hate your story? Ouch. That's a harsh one. But don't give up. You loved it once. You can again.

Maybe you're sick of it. When's the last time you took a break? Take a night off--or more--once in a while. Read a book. Write something else. (Smutty fanfics are fun. >_> )

Go back to the beginning. Not that beginning--the very beginning. The inspiration for your story, the reason you first fell in love with it. Your story came from somewhere. Go remember where. You might hate your story because you wandered too far from your inspiration. Finding your source can get you back on track.

This leads to another problem--how do you know you've gone wrong? I know, I hear you--Demmit, KD, for three segments you said "just write, you can't get it wrong--"

Well, yes. But there are two kinds of wrong. The goof is easy. Just make a note and fix it later. Then there's the other kind--faking it. Being untrue to what you've built.

In one of my novels, slavers kidnapped a friend of my main character to see what she'd do. Since it was just a test, the slavers didn't hurt him.

Right.

I got stuck and I couldn't see why, until I realized slavers would plan for their profit margin in case she didn't take him back. So better get him ready for market...

Why yes. I did cry while I wrote that.

Should you hit a wall, especially if you were madly typing before it, look for this issue. Did you go easy on your characters because you love them? Send them around the battle so no one would die in it? Dodge a romance to avoid blushing while you wrote? You can't do that. There are ways around such things. Arbitrarily "making it so" is not one of them.

You're a writer. You know this.

If you're good and stuck and nothing helps, set it aside for a while and take up another project. Many of my stories have been set aside for months, even years. Picking it back up is hard, yes, but it's still better than grinding the joy out of writing. I find this especially helpful when the end will not let me write it. This has happened twice--I knew exactly what I wanted to have happen, and I couldn't do it. So I jotted down my plans and I moved on. When I came back around during editing, I wrote those chapters and they were marvelous. In both cases, it turns out, I had grandiose "give them all medals in front of the entire Rebel Alliance" endings planned, and they just didn't work. Given a bit of distance, I was able to pare down my melodramatic impulses.

Other times you've just got to push through. If you've never finished a story, I say push on no matter what. You've got to find your writing method, and you can't do that stuck inside an incomplete story. If you push too hard and go astray, you can fix it. That's why we're writers, not bomb disposal specialists. Right?

Although...being a demolitions expert would help with those really persistent blocks.