Every writer alive (I imagine, by this point in the twenty-first century) has not only heard of writer’s block, but suspects or believes that they’ve suffered from it once or twice. I was on a Twitter thread (as it then was) many moons ago, and a writer of fantasy was saying that he couldn’t move forward with his idea. He had characters, but he didn’t know what to do with them. I asked him, in a sympathetic and supportive way, a series of questions about what he had done and what aspects of his story he was thinking about. The answer was always ‘No’. This guy was not going to get past his writer’s block because he wasn’t doing any of the things that I believe you need to try if you’re not going to be held hostage by it.
On the one hand, the blockage — the brake on your forward creative movement — is real. You’re not finding solutions to your plot questions or problems; you’re not being struck by delightful inspirations; and you feel as though, invention-wise, you’ve run out of road. The life-giving, succulent creative juices might just as well have dried completely up.
On the other hand, the stopping-up of your creative momentum is not some ineluctable consequence of trying to write fiction (or even, depending on the type, non-fiction).
As with anything creative, there is no single solution or approach that will get you over the hurdle of knowing what to write next. And that’s a good thing! There are a number of ‘hacks’ you can try to unlock your forward movement. I’ll mention the ten that come most easily to mind.
Number One: Take notes about any and all aspects of your story or project. If you have a thought in the night, don’t assume you’ll remember it in the morning: jot it down on a notepad by your bedside. I confess that I don’t have a bedside notepad, but I do have a blackboard, and I’ve been known to get up in the wee hours and scrawl something on it with a handy piece of chalk.
Number Two: Remind yourself of what you want your character to have learned by the story’s end — or else what you want your readers to have understood by the time they've turned the last page. Don’t always be thinking from the beginnings of your story elements, but be willing to work backwards from the end-point. For instance, in your fiction or non-fiction (it could be either), your protagonist dies on the mountain during a historic storm, despite every valiant attempt to get back down. What were the valiant attempts, who made them, when, and with what obstacles in the way? Before the obstacles ended all hope of rescue, what gave the rescuers optimism, what helps did they have? Working backwards from your book’s ‘destination’ can often help you get over your block.
Number Three: Don’t expect to get all the answers you want on the same day, or the first or third or fifth time you mentally re-visit the question. Some ideas will come to you like lightning, seemingly as if by divine thunderbolt. Other ideas require more probing and contemplation. Your book is a complex creation with many different parts, and they don’t all ‘grow’ or mature at the same time.
Number Four: That said, if there is some aspect of your project that is not coming along as you need it to, that could be a sign that there is a problem with your approach. Either the plot development does not really make sense or you haven’t found the right way to unfold it to the reader. Perhaps initially you really loved the idea of 99-year-old Uncle Jerry running away to the circus, but perhaps the truth is that as a plot device or expression of character, it doesn’t really work. Instead of doing your head in, trying to imagine how Uncle Jerry sleeps in the same dorm with the Bearded Lady or avoids the flirtatious elephant, maybe you’d be better off finding another way for him to act out his adventurous personality.
Number Five: Talk to yourself about your project. Record yourself, or just speak entirely freely where no one can hear you and you don’t feel self-conscious. No one is judging you, so you can say things like ‘I’m having trouble with Uncle Jerry’s 100th birthday bash because…’. And be frank with yourself about it. Tell yourself what you like about the project so far: ‘There’s lots of humour and I make myself laugh reading the dialogue’. Mention what you may be unsure about: ‘Should the scene where Jerry meets the woman he’ll propose to come before or after the scene with the carton of broken eggs?’. The point is not to be critical of yourself, but rather to look critically at what you feel confident about and what you don’t, and why.
Number Six: Read other books — not necessarily on the topics that your own book touches on (though that might be most helpful!). Just read, plain and simple. Reading about life in all its richness, wherever and however you do your reading, feeds your mind and gives you more dots that your mind, even when you’re not actively working on a problem, will by itself start connecting. Reading is an enriching experience, not just for the future readers of your book, but for you while you’re writing it.
Number Seven: Give yourself permission to take a stab at a scene or chapter that you’re really not sure about (for whatever reason). Remember that you are entirely free to write something, think better of it, and throw it out (although maybe you will write some lines that will do good service elsewhere in your book: don’t be too ready to dispose of what you write!). Getting sclerotic and afraid and feeling that everything must be perfect right from the start is absolute death for a creative writer. Give yourself permission to make experiments and see where they might lead your thoughts. When you know it’s an experiment, no time spent on the experiment is wasted, since you will always learn something.
Number Eight: Think about your audience. Who are you writing for, and what are their expectations? What sort of language is best pitched to their age, education level, attitudes? Have you established in your own mind how you want to communicate your story or knowledge to these readers? Are you really sure that your narrative is best served by writing in the first person — or third person? Has you approach so far been too casual — or too serious? Could your book do with more humour, or have you been too jokey for the subject? I bring this up because ‘voice’ matters, and the voice or approach you’ve chosen may be getting in the way of your book’s progress.
Number Nine: Give what you’ve written so far to an interested reader to read. Note that I said ‘interested’. It doesn’t much matter if the reader is your professor mum, your super-supportive best friend, your hairdresser brother, or Uncle Jerry who’s nearly 100, so long as they have a genuine interest in what you’ve written. What do they have to say? You don’t, of course, have to take all their comments as authoritative, never mind as your marching orders. But having a supportive reader give you their response may be illuminating, and may help give you further direction.
Number Ten: If you’ve done work on the book and it’s more or less stalled, put it down for a while. Could be a week, could be a month. Perhaps it’ll even be a year. If it’s really something you want to do, you’ll come back to it sooner or later. But you won’t do anything worthwhile without internal fire and enthusiasm. Let time test your commitment. If this book is for you to create, whatever it costs you in the writer’s equivalent of blood, sweat, and tears, then let that book prove it to you.
And there you have it: my top ten tips for getting over writer’s block. If you’d like to leave a comment about your own experience, please do. I’d like to hear from you!
