6 Tips and 1 Big Secret
Before we address your writer’s block, we need to consider what kind of writer you are and what kind of writing you do.
More specifically, where do you want your career to go?
If you are currently at the hobbyist level, meaning you love writing for fun and have these characters you enjoy working with, that’s great. Maybe you make maps and character drawings and post them on your favorite website. But today, you’re stuck, and you’re looking up how to fight writer’s block. That’s awesome — we’ll talk about the techniques you need to employ to get through it because there are many.
On the other hand, if you are a writer who fully intends to get paid for your work, whether full-time or part-time, we have to address writer’s block from a different perspective.
Here’s the reality:
If you are someone who writes fiction to make money, you don’t get writer’s block.
You don’t have the luxury of writer’s block. Whether you are going the traditional route, the indie route, or a hybrid, you’re doing it at a professional level in exchange for funds. You are a professional writer.
You may experience “project” block, as my friend Michael Stackpole once said. You might be working on a project and get stuck for a second. What’s the solution to that? You go to another project.
Most of my writer friends in the indie world have more than one project going at any one time for just such an occasion. Maybe your urban fantasy isn’t working for you this morning, so you shift to your YA romance. For those in traditional publishing, if you’re doing a book a year, you still probably have more than one project going because you don’t know which one will sell.
In any case, you’re a professional. You are expected to turn over fiction for your audience. There’s no room for writer’s block.
I recently wrote a 90,000-word novel in three months. The first month was for research and outlining. The other two months were for writing. Almost every day, I got up, looked at where I was, figured out what part of the story I was in, and dove in, getting 2,000 to 3,000 words a day. I followed an outline, and when you’ve crafted a really good outline, you don’t get writer’s block.
You might get tired, which is different. Physical or personal setbacks are not writer’s block.
When under contract for that novel, I overwrote as much as I could to build in time for unforeseen events. Things happen, so I wrote as much as I could when I was in the zone. I don’t believe in writing every day as a necessity. For me, I write when I can. But having a solid outline and writing like hell when you can means there’s no room for writer’s block.
I beat my deadline by a week.
Now, let’s talk about the more fun side: What if you’re just working on something as a hobbyist, enthusiast, or apprentice? When you’re stuck, there are a few things I always recommend to my students.
First, get out of your space.
You probably have a space that you typically write in. If the routine isn’t working for you, you need somewhere new. Go to a library, a park, a coffee shop, or even a different room in your home. Change your visual and sensory perspective to kickstart your creativity.
Second, have an outline.
If you have a solid outline, you don’t have to worry about writer’s block as much. You know what’s next. If you’re not excited about a scene in your outline, it probably shouldn’t be there.
Third, get to the good scene.
There’s no rule that says you have to write in order. Write what excites you the most.
Fourth, engage with your favorite media.
Watching favorite movies, reading favorite books, listening to favorite music, or reading poetry can be really good for breaking up a solid logjam in writer’s block. But avoid mindless scrolling on social media. Be deliberate in your engagement.
Your Voice was influenced by movies, by media, by songs, by other things that you’ve read.
So invest back into those. Go read your favorite book. Take an hour, make your favorite food, sit in your comfy chair and get back into the thing that led you to today. Other authors, other storytellers, guided you to today. Go revisit them, hang out with them, read them, watch them.
Which is not the same thing as, “Well, Tom said take a couple hours…” and look at YouTube.
No, no, no, no.
Don’t go to YouTube. Don’t go to TikTok. Don’t go to any of these places. Don’t mindlessly scroll and call it work. That’s not work. You know it and I know it. I’m talking about the deliberate, intentional act of taking an hour or two hours to relax, get back in touch with your self, get back in touch with your heroes, your mentors, and then see how the scene progresses.
Fifth, get outside.
A ten-minute walk or just being outside can change your mindset. Engage with your surroundings deeply, using all your senses. Be safe, obviously. But get out. Get out and get moving. A ten minute walk. A 30 minute walk can change all kinds of things. Put your phone away. Don’t put your earbuds in. Just walk as you’re walking. Or if you can’t walk for whatever reason. Cool. Just be outside and just sit. But as you’re sitting or as you’re walking, notice and take note of the things around you. But dive deep! Don’t just look at the pretty flowers. Stop. Literally smell those roses. Smell the snapdragons. Touch them. What’s it feel like? What does it remind you of? Listen to everythin. Can you if you break off the twig of of a tree, just a little bush — what does that sound like?
What is the texture of that little stick that you just broke off? What does it smell like? Get that stuff into your brain. Don’t worry about the book. Don’t worry about the scene. Just get those sensory things going. And I’m I can’t guarantee, but I’m confident that when you sit back down, you will find a new sort of freshness to the writing.
Lastly, write something else.
If you’re stuck, work on another project or take one of your characters and put them in a new, challenging situation. This can reveal new aspects of your characters and invigorate your creativity.
If you don’t have another project on on the back burner, take one of your characters from this current project and put them in a locked concrete room with some of their character, either one of yours or a character that you like from literature or movies
Lock them in this room and let them start talking to each other and just see what happens. One of my favorite stories about this, about breaking writer’s block, is I took a 17 year old girl who was an artist from my novel ZERO. I put her in a room with a 30 year old space pirate and locked them in a concrete bunker just to see what would happen.
And while you’re never going to see that scene because it’s never going to be published — it was just a three-page thing that I wrote really quickly –the dialogue revealed so much about both of those characters that there are still little elements of that exchange in those two books. It’s weird, but it works. Just throw them in a room, see what happens.
Remember, if you’re a professional, you need to think about writer’s block differently. If you’re just a hobbyist, don’t worry about it too much. You’ll get there. But if you’re at the professional level or planning to be, your approach to getting through writer’s block will change because your livelihood depends on it.
I hope some of this is helpful. Leave me questions or comments. I’m just glad you’re here, and we’ll do this again soon. Take care.
If you found this article helpful, may I point you to STORYCRAFT. Ten hours of hanging out with two successful hybrid authors, talking about everything from story structure, to approaching agents and dealing with traditional contracts, to the highs and lows of indie pub. Check it out: https://tomleveen.store/b/storycraft
