by Dave Haslett
You’re unlikely to suffer from writer’s block if you use the techniques in this book. But just in case you do – or in case you have a friend who needs help – the next chapter is packed with tips on how to avoid and overcome it.
16. No more writer’s block
You’ve come to a complete standstill. You can’t write another word. You haven’t got a clue what you’re going to write next. Your mind is blank. You’ll never be able to write again. Your talent has left you, possibly forever. Perhaps you never had any talent in the first place.
These are the symptoms of writer’s block – a temporary condition that’s easily cured and even easier to avoid.
Stick to the outline
If you’re following a detailed outline, as we discussed in Chapter 7, you should always know exactly what you’re going to write next. All you have to do at the writing stage is to expand the outline into its full text.
Remember, you should be able to write each section of your book in a single mini-session, consisting of five minutes of thinking time followed by around fifteen to twenty minutes of writing time. A couple of sentences or a bullet point in your outline should, on average, represent two paragraphs of your finished book.
If you’ve got writer’s block, you didn’t break your outline down far enough or include enough detail. It’s worth reading Chapter 7 again as the techniques in that chapter are the foundation of everything else in this book.
It all comes back to the outline
Could there be something wrong with your outline? Could you have missed something important? Perhaps your subconscious is telling you to stop writing and fix the problem. If you’re feeling blocked, go through your outline in fine detail, making sure you’ve covered everything and it all flows logically.
Character issues
If you’re writing a novel and your outline seems fine but you still can’t move forward, the problem might lie with one of your characters. Have you chosen the right people for the story? Is one (or more) of them not working out the way you expected? Are any of them too dull or ordinary? Are there any you don’t care about?
This is a common problem.
There are two ways of fixing this:
The fastest way is to change the characters to fit the story. You could give them a personality boost to make them more appealing, or swap them for entirely different characters.
Your main character should be very appealing and live life on the edge. If he looks ordinary, it’s because he’s wearing a disguise. He is anything but ordinary. In everyday life, he stands out and people notice him.
The other option, though less common, is to make him ordinary, but have extraordinary things happen to him. This type of character can work well in comedies and farces. Think of Homer Simpson in the animated comedy series The Simpsons.
If you think your characters are perfect and you’re excited about them, the other way to fix things is to change the story to fit them. It might take you a few days to figure it all out and you’ll have to rework your outline. But if it makes your book better, and it cures your writer’s block, it’s worth doing.
Before you make any drastic changes, spend a few mini writing sessions playing around with the options and possibilities. Write some short scenes that explore how things might work if you did it a different way. Then pick the one you like best.
Think it through
Remember to give yourself five minutes of thinking time at the start of every session. Read the relevant section of your outline, then consider it and expand it. Organise your thoughts. Rehearse what you’re going to write, and start forming the sentences in your head. Don’t write a single word until you’ve thought it through properly. You don’t have to be anywhere near your computer while you do this. In fact, if you’re struggling with writer’s block it usually helps to get away from it.
If the words don’t come, even after five minutes of thinking time, it’s clearly a tricky section. You might need to spend several five-minute thinking sessions on it. Take as long as you need until you know exactly what you’re going to say. Or you could skip that section for now and work on an easier one.
The good news is that most sections won’t be as bad as that. You’ll be able to think your way through some of them in less than a minute. And sometimes, when you glance at your outline, you’ll know exactly what you’re going to say and you won’t need any thinking time at all. So it should all balance out in the end.
Talk it through
If you’ve been busy writing your book, your friends might not have seen you for a few weeks. Perhaps it’s time to catch up with them again. And you could talk the problem through with them, either in the real world or online.
What events or activities have you stopped going to because you wanted to get on with your book? Go to one, catch up with what’s been happening, and chat about what you’ve been up to.
Phone or email someone you haven’t heard from for a while.
If you’re on Facebook, have a look through your list of friends and see which ones you haven’t chatted to for a while. Send them a message and mention the problems you’re having. They probably won’t have an answer, but just talking about it can help. As we saw earlier, the answer will often come to you as soon as you tell someone else about it. And if it doesn’t, at least you have someone you can bounce ideas around with.
If you don’t have any friends you can talk to about these issues, you’ll find plenty of them online. There are hundreds of writing forums and writing-related Facebook groups you can join. Most of them are friendly and welcoming and full of people willing to offer advice. Some of the members will undoubtedly be suffering from writer’s block too, and will be going through the same issues as you are right now. See if you can help each other get through it. Those who have already overcome it will be happy to tell you how they did it.
Deadlines
Deadlines are a terrific way of beating writer’s block. You have to get your book finished by a certain date … or else!
It has to be a serious deadline though. If you believe you could miss it by a day, a week, or even a couple of months, and it won’t make the slightest difference, then this idea won’t work.
But if you’ll lose your publishing deal, or your contract will be cancelled, or you’ll get fired from your job, then it’s a serious deadline. You’ll work your socks off to meet it, even if it means staying up all night and typing until your fingers bleed. That’s the sort of deadline that will cure your writer’s block.
If you don’t have a serious deadline, it’s easy enough to create one:
Tell everyone when your book will be finished. Announce the date on your website, blog, Facebook page, and all the forums you belong to.
Arrange a launch party and send out invitations. If you don’t finish the book on time, and you have to cancel the party, you’ll be a laughing stock.
If you’re publishing your book yourself, put it up on Amazon as a pre-order. If it isn’t ready by its official release date, you’ll have to suffer the embarrassment of letting your readers down – especially those who have already ordered copies. Amazon will also ban you from doing any more pre-orders for a year.
Do what Alexander Dumas père did when he managed to write a play in just three days: bet some cold, hard cash on your ability to finish it on time. The bigger the bet, the faster you’ll write.
If you have a publisher or agent who’s waiting for you to finish your book. Tell him to tear up your contract if you don’t deliver it on time. It’s drastic – and many would say it’s foolhardy and stupid – but it should work.
Your publisher or agent will take a great deal of persuading that you’re being serious. But you need him to take it seriously: if you don’t deliver your book on time, that’s it, it’s over, your contract is cancelled. If it’s a real threat, you’ll do everything you can to deliver it on time.
You are a supercomputer
Imagine a computer that’s been programmed t
o calculate something really complex. What if that complex thing was the plot, characters, dialogue, viewpoints, locations, motivations, goals, relationships, interactions, emotions, theme, timelines, structure, pacing, clues, red herrings, character arcs, story and sub-plot arcs, flashbacks, hazards, hooks, traps, escapes, tension, conflicts, resolutions, thrills, cliff hangers, climax … and everything else that goes into writing a bestselling novel.
Even a supercomputer would need time to run through all the calculations and permutations.
Looking at that list, it’s a wonder any novels get written at all!
Fortunately, humans – and writers in particular – are amazing. Our brains are more powerful than any supercomputer. But even so, there are limits on what’s physically possible. As you can see from the list above, there are a lot of calculations to be done. Working through them all will take a considerable amount of time.
You might interpret this period of necessary thinking time as having writer’s block. But you probably aren’t blocked at all: it’s just that the calculations haven’t been completed yet.
Your brain will let you know when they’re done. You’ll feel the urge to start writing again. The words will flow easily. And you’ll soon make up the time you thought you’d lost.
Ditch your word processor
This is another idea we looked at earlier: if you’re stuck, write your book in your email program instead of your word processor. You use email to keep in touch with your friends and family, so it feels friendlier and less intimidating. Plus there are fewer buttons and menus to distract you, and no page breaks or word count to put pressure on you.
How good a writer are you really?
Do you ever doubt your writing ability? We all do from time to time – even authors who have published dozens of bestsellers. If you need reassurance, let someone who’s qualified and experienced take a look at your work.
There are three possible outcomes:
your writing is good
your writing is okay but could use some improvement
your writing is terrible
If someone who’s qualified to pass judgement on your writing tells you it’s good, then you’ll know you’re doing it right. That should give you a tremendous confidence boost, and it might be enough to banish your writer’s block immediately. Winning a writing competition can also have this effect, so it’s worth entering them from time to time.
My book How to Win Short Story Competitions, co-written with Geoff Nelder, should increase your chances of success.
If your writing is terrible (according to the professional) that doesn’t mean you should give up. Go back to basics and take a writing course. Work hard at learning your craft. Practise and polish the skills the professional says you need to work on. Keep asking for feedback and making improvements until your weaknesses have become strengths and your work is good enough to be published. Then you’ll never have to worry about it again.
Alternatively, you might decide that writing isn’t really your thing. That doesn’t mean you can’t write books though. You could still be a storyteller or a teacher or give speeches and presentations. And you could record your stories, classes, lectures, speeches or presentations, get them typed up, and turn them into books.
You could work with a friend, co-writer or ghost writer to turn your ideas into words. Or you could do what James Patterson does: come up with the outlines for books and stories and pay a better writer to write them for you. He makes around £70 million a year from doing that.
Editing comes later
As I’ve said throughout the book, writing and editing are separate processes that use different parts of the brain. You should never try to do both in the same writing session; it’s asking for trouble. Concentrate on writing your book and ignore the errors until it’s finished.
It’s not that easy, of course. The urge to fix your mistakes as you go, and to find better ways of saying things, is a difficult one to fight. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower. You have to push yourself to keep writing, ignoring the invisible editor who’s watching over your shoulder. If you can manage it, it’s one of the best ways of writing books quickly, and one of the best ways of overcoming writer’s block.
The same thing applies if you think your book is boring: it doesn’t matter at this stage. You can make it much more exciting in later drafts by adding more action and tension in your action scenes, adjusting the pacing, tightening your writing, making your characters more interesting, and so on. But you need a finished manuscript to play around with first. So just get the darned thing written and worry about everything else later.
Remember, all you have to do at this stage is to expand what’s in your outline. It doesn’t matter if your writing “sucks”. Everyone’s does in the first draft, and no one else will ever see it. You’ll show them a more polished version later.
Hop, skip and jump
One of the many advantages of having a detailed outline is that you can skip around it as you write your book; you don’t have to write it in sequential order. If you’re having problems with a particular section, skip it for now and write one of the easier parts.
The beginning is often the hardest part to write, so leave it until last.
When you’ve written everything except the parts you skipped, go back and fill in the gaps. Think about why you left them. Did you think those parts would be hard to write? Did you try writing them and give up? Could you write them now? If you can, go ahead.
If they still look difficult, see if you can work out why, and what you can do about it. Can you summarise them, or break them down into smaller steps, or gloss over the details, or change them, or swap them for something else, or leave them out?
Can you think of something better to put there instead? Are they in the right place? Should they come earlier or later in the book? Do they even belong in this book at all?
Could someone else help you write those parts?
Perhaps you just need to push yourself harder to get on with it. You’ll feel a lot better when the whole thing is finished. And as you’ve only got the bits you skipped left to do, you’re very nearly there.
Always writing
Most writers find that when they’re immersed in their work their thoughts flow smoothly and the writing is easy. The problems come when they stop writing. They look at the next section of their outline and doubts start to creep in, the ideas dry up, the writing gets slower and harder … and then they’re stuck.
The secret is to not stop writing.
Try keeping two word processing documents open at the same time. If you get stuck, immediately switch to the other document and write about the section you’re having trouble with. Jot down why you think you’re stuck on it, how you got to that point, various directions you could take, and so on. If nothing comes to mind, just keep writing your name over and over again. Don’t stop writing, even for a second.
When the ideas start flowing again – which they should do if you keep going for several minutes – switch back to your main document and carry on where you left off.
If the ideas still aren’t flowing after several minutes, stop writing and look at what you’ve written in the second document. In particular, look at any notes you’ve made about other directions you could take. You might have found the perfect way forward without realising it. Or perhaps you’ve identified a specific problem that needs to be resolved before you can carry on.
A similar technique is to write solidly for an entire mini writing session – fifteen to twenty minutes. Don’t stop for anything. Don’t edit your work, don’t stop to look up words you can’t think of; just keep scribbling away or pounding on the keys. What you write needn’t have anything to do with your book. You could write some thoughts about your next book, or your shopping list, or your Christmas card list, a list of all the people you know, the names of all your neighbours, or the titles of all the books you can remember reading. It doesn’t matter what you write as long you w
rite something.
Once you’re writing again – even if it’s nothing to do with your book – the doubts will gradually ease and the ideas will flow once more. Somewhere in the middle of whatever you were writing, you’ll probably have the urge to get on with your book again – and you’ll know exactly what you should write.
There’s no business like … writing
If you treat writing as a business, it should help you overcome most problems with writer’s block.
For example, imagine that you’re a reporter for a local newspaper and you’re working on a news story that you have no interest in.
Most reporters have to do that every day. You’ll have to write the story anyway if you want to keep your job. So it’s best to just push on.
At least you have a choice about what you write, unlike the poor reporters.
Positive mental attitude
Writer’s block often happens when you lose confidence in your writing ability, lose confidence in yourself, or you let the thought of potential success scare you.
Again, this happens to all of us from time to time. Most successful writers sometimes believe they became successful by mistake and they’ll get found out eventually. And many highly successful actors and entertainers suffer from stage fright or develop it later in their careers.