What Happens When the Words Don’t Come
I could beat around the bush and make you wait until the end of this, but I’ll save you some time…writer’s block does not exist. There. I said it. In fact, I’ll say it again: writer’s block does not exist.
At this point I imagine a lot of writers want to slap me upside the head and try to knock some sense into me. Of course writer’s block exists, they might insist. Every writer gets hit by it. One day, for no reason whatsoever, the words simply don’t come. Just because you (meaning me) haven’t experienced it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s very much real.
To which I say, “Poppycock.”
I will concede that writer’s block might be the wordsmith version of professional burn-out. If that’s the case, then yeah, it exists. But I don’t think that is all that common. What is more common is that a writer gets hit with fear. It could be fear of failure. It could be fear of success. It might be fear of actually finishing a draft and putting it out there for comments and criticism. It could also be another of a myriad of reasons that still boils down to fear.
The trouble is that writer’s block comes in so many forms. In the very first screenplay I wrote, I managed to get my heroes and foe stuck in a Mexican standoff…and I just couldn’t figure out how to get them out of it. I fretted about it for days, never finding satisfaction. Was this the dreaded writer’s block? No. It was merely a story difficulty. It is probably the most common form of blockage. Fortunately, the solution is quick and amazingly simple. In fact, it’s so bloody brilliant that I’ll put it in its own paragraph.
At the point of difficulty, write the words “Something happens here” and then pick up where you want the story to be after the little difficulty.
My experience, and the experience of every writer I know who employs this method, is that it always works. Simply ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away actually makes the problem go away. By the time you get to the rewrite, the difficulty isn’t so difficult and it’s generally easy to write your way through it.
A more insidious form of the block is blank page syndrome. This generally happens at the beginning of a work or sometimes at the start of a chapter. You only see the blank page in front of you. You’d write down something, but you don’t because it won’t be good enough. So what? So it’s awful. So it’s the worst thing every to emerge from your head — and I’m including that large blog of greenish goo that exited your nose last time you had a bad head cold. Big friggin’ deal. You’ll fix it in rewrite. It’s going to be rewritten anyway, so stop worrying. But, if you still have trouble getting started…wait, let’s start a new paragraph for that, too.
When you are faced with a blank page/screen that does nothing but taunt you, write the name of a character and follow it with, “thought to
Now, I’m not going to outline every type of writer’s block here along with solutions. There really isn’t any point since y’all have already discovered the secret…writing cures writer’s block. But if you do worry about this, I have two more tricks that will keep you from being stuck in the mud with your mental tires spinning. First: always know the climax or final scene of your story. It’s easier to make a journey if you know where you are going. Second: End each session’s writing just before you run out of things to say. By finishing them at the start of the next session, you kick-start your creative mind and can more easily get into the rhythm that produces lots of words. Notice I don’t say “good words”…usually it’s more important to get quantity rather than quality during the early draft stage where the block often crashes down on the hapless writer.
[Something happens here.]And there it is. No more writers block…unless you are comatose or worse (I’ll give you a break there :-) So what are you doing sitting there reading my drivel? Go write!
