Thursday 13 #18 ~ Beating the Block

Thirteen Ways to Beat Writer’s Block

For the struggling WriMo’s out there…

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1. Word Wars. (You and several others get together and have a competition to see who gets the most words in a given period of time. Usually short, say a half-hour max. Prizes are given. Much writing ensues.)
2. Pull out the trusty pen and paper. (Nothing cheers me up like writing with a fun pen. Or on fun paper. Or – if I’m really stuck – both.)
3. Go to a random generator site. (I like Seventh Sanctum.) Play with the generator, and use what it gives you in a sentence/paragraph/scene. (For example, I just got a random generation of this hypothetical situation at the What-if-inator: What if…” …Imhotep lived in a world where the fall of Satan had never happened?”)
4. Stop trying to write. Get up. Go for a walk/run/bike ride around the block. Something physical to get your blood pumping before coming back to the story.
5. Look at the clock. Try to determine if you have been eating regular meals. If not, fix yourself a healthy snack (or meal, depending on how bad you’ve been.) Don’t go straight back to trying to write; instead stay slightly active for a short while as you digest. Do go back to writing while you are still energized from the food.
6. Put on some favorite music, close your eyes, and think – in very general terms – about your story. Perhaps choose some music that’s appropriate for the world you’re writing about, and imagine what the characters would do while listening. Perhaps just create images of your characters in your mind.
7. Write one word. Then write another. Ignore how many you have left to write, and focus on crafting a single sentence. Then another. Do not worry overmuch about quality; while you do want the sentence to be worth putting on the page, it does not need to spring from your head, fully formed, the way Athena did to Zeus. Books may not be your babies, but they certainly require a lot of growing up before they are ready to go out into the world.
8. Pull out that old magnetic poetry kit you have laying around from your college days (this isn’t just me, right?) and start stringing random words together. Something will come up.
9. Look through pictures for images that seem to go with your WIP. One that looks like your characters, or the setting, or some strange device that belongs in your villain’s lab. Then describe it. The description may not fit with the exact spot that has you stuck, but it will get you writing about your WIP again. And you never know – it just might give you some added insight to your characters.
10. Write a letter from your character (or to him). Include references to people you already know, and those you don’t, as well as situations that aren’t fully fleshed out in your mind. This is a great way to remember that characters had a life before page one. (Works best with characters who weren’t actually born during the course of the book.)
11. Ignore the rules. Rules are great – use them when you edit. Not while you write.
12. Make a date of it. If you’re blocked? Stop writing. Stop trying to write. Set a time – later, perhaps the next morning or after everyone’s gone to bed – when you will write. And then let your story sit until then. Sure, think about it, but don’t write it. And when the time comes for your date? Make sure you write a reasonable amount, and stop before you hit a block again.
13. Remember that writing is fun. Because if it isn’t, why are you doing it? This work is too hard to keep doing it if you no longer want to.

Happy Thursday!

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