Help! I’ve Got Writer’s Block
Writer: Maggie Smith
You recognize the feeling, right? You know you should be writing, but you aren’t and it’s making you crazy and you need to get past it but you’re not sure how. The pen’s in your hand but the paper’s got nothing on it. You’re sitting in front of your computer in your cozy writing nook or the neighborhood coffee shop but the screen is blank. You’re stuck with no idea what to do.
It helps to remember that writer’s block is sometimes not about the writing itself.
You want it to be perfect. You tell yourself what you write isn’t good enough. You read your last chapter and judge it crap. You pick up the latest Celeste Ng and compare your story to hers. You read A Gentleman in Moscow and despair of ever writing such perfect prose. You read through your character’s pivotal encounter with her mother and realize your words just lie there on the page. Why even try this writing thing if you can’t be any good at it? And by good, you mean landing a top agent or winning a writing competition. Nothing else counts.
If this is you, remember the only person to compare yourself to is YOU. Shoot for improving your own writing by re-reading a craft book or joining a critique group or taking a workshop. Or just go back to the first thing you wrote and realize how much better you’ve gotten in the time since.
Or maybe the problem is timing. Have you or someone in your family been ill? Have you been getting enough sleep? Is the job that pays the bills zapping your energy? If so, stop worrying. All these are time limited. Once you get through them, you can pick up where you left off on your manuscript. Until then, concentrate on getting well/solving problems/enjoying life rather than beating yourself up. It’s called SELF-CARE and it’s vital to your mental health.
Or fear could be the root of your impasse. Maybe you’re writing about issues you feel passionate about but they’re dredging up old tapes, exposing wounds, making you re-examine emotional landmines from your past. Or it could be new fears, like what if you bare your soul and your work gets rejected—by friends, by critique partners, by agents? What if your writing skills aren’t developed enough to do justice to this story? If so, remember why you chose to write this story to begin with—so your readers would know they weren’t alone. This goal is noble and brave. Keep writing, find your way through the pain, know there are readers out there who need your words.
If none of these reasons fit, try the three tricks below. They center around learning to enjoy the process rather than focusing on the outcome.
- The average person has 70,000 thoughts a day so trust me, you’re not out of ideas. Instead, you need to give yourself permission to explore the ideas you’re having. Carry a notebook with you for a week and jot down ten interesting things you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste daily. Write a sentence at the end of the day that incorporates those notes and imagine how they could fit into your story.
- Write outside your comfort zone. Write a poem or a flash piece in the voice of your antagonist. Write a blog post that stems from a personal anecdote. Look up writing prompts on the internet and spend an hour playing with whatever comes into your head. Go to a stock photo website and browse, imagining what happened right before the photographer took this shot. Put the characters in your current work in Elizabethan England or on the moon, change their gender or their age. In other words, PLAY.
- Mimic your favorite writers. Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” There’s a host of savvy teachers on your bookshelf – find an author you admire, turn to page 75 (where something important usually happens) and copy out a few paragraphs. Now replicate the tone, feeling, voice using characters and plot points in your own novel. Do this with three different authors and you’ll discover there’s no “right way” to write your narrative. Only the one that works for you.
As for me, I’m channeling Charles Bukowski this morning, who wrote: “Writing about writer’s block is better than not writing at all.”
About the Writer
In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art consulting company, Maggie Smith now adds novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies. In addition to her writing, Maggie hosts the weekly podcast Hear Us Roar, where she interviews debut authors about their novel and their path to publication and blogs monthly for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. A board member of the Chicago Writer’s Association, she’s Managing Editor of their Write City Magazine, and coordinator of Book Nook, which highlights Chicago-area independent bookstores.
Website: maggiesmithwriter.com