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Hump Day--Getting over the himp from writer's block 10/2/2013 4:11:21 AM
It's hump day, and here are five techniques to get over the hump if you have writer's block. This being Wednesday, so called hump day according to the camel, I thought I’d blog about writer’s block, and offer some suggestions on how to get over the 'hump' when the words won’t flow like they ought’a. Some of this is from the Greenleaf Author Summit in Texas last week. Parts of it are taken from my own WIP, a self-help concept book that began forming at the summit. Working title is Your Flight Plan For Life. I’m combining my knowledge of the aviation craft with that of the writing craft. Aimed at writers, YFPFL uses the premise that we’re all pilots, regardless of what we do, and writers especially so, since we consider our efforts more craft than career. By the way, I’ll be looking for beta readers for this book soon. Drop me a line if you're interested, there will be goodies for you. The Greenleaf Group summit in Austin was a good show, good networking opportunity and great atmosphere. Based on what I saw and heard there I’m of the opinion that the time is exactly right to be an independent author, with many, many publishing resources arriving every day, lots of support out there and great opportunities to tell our stories. It’s also a wonderful time to get ripped off by the opportunists among us, the writer wannabes who are peddling ‘surefire techniques to send your writing into the stratosphere’ (while launching their own bank accounts into near-earth orbit) but that’s a whole other blog post. Stay tuned. First, it’s hump day, and the words have to arrive on the lines.
Writer’s block. We’ve all confronted this blank-faced monster, the awful feeling we get while facing the opaque computer screen that’s screaming for content, a paragraph, a sentence, a damn word will do! This writerly paralysis has been written about forever, most times, I’m guessing, as a meta essay on the very problem it addresses. Can’t write? Write something about not being able to write! Here are my personal views on the ailment called writer’s block, five ways to either avoid it or get past it. 1— I believe it starts well before we sit down to write. Like many days and weeks before. Mindfulness is a new concept, a takeoff on meditation and focused behavior that has the potential to cure a lot of the chaos-driven ailments we experience, such things as writer’s block, for instance. A Mindful Nation, by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan is all about this new concept. It really does work. In counterintuitive fashion, staying away from the writing, focusing instead on possible challenges to it can allow us to better return to it. Kids getting lousy grades? Spouse having a twit about bills? Car dead? In-laws in town? The Mindfulness model demands attention to that issue. The writing, by taking a back seat, magically moves forward. Try it; it works. 2— Physical activity has always helped me get back to the manuscript. A nearby park has a one-mile gravel path that’s given me several decent ideas on how to fill up the page, how to resolve plot points, what characters are really like and how to arrive at ‘The End’ in satisfactory fashion. It’s far too easy to sit staring at the screen all day, stuck for a way forward. Do some jumping jacks, walk up and down stairs, go around the ‘block’ so to speak. Get physical and the words will come. 3— Freewrite. This is a technique one of my instructors had us use in a creative non-fiction class at Ohio State. Take a blank sheet of paper (no computer, this is a muscle-memory exercise) and start writing. Don’t worry about form, content, legibility even sense. Just scribble whatever weird, silly, nonsensical words and phrases and punctuation that pops into your brain. Set a timer for five minutes and do not remove the pen from the paper. Keep writing, pushing words out as fast as you can. That fragment of a dream from last night? Put it down. Kids’ lousy grades? The grocery list, kids ages and weights, spouse’s latest gripes about bills, the ending to Breaking Bad, your favorite Okra recipe? Whatever, just write, write, write. Freewriting may cramp your hand, but it will uncramp your brain and help you move forward. 4— Here’s a radical idea: put it away for a week. If you’re like me you feel compelled to write every day. Even if it’s just a blog post, a thank you card or a book review you must put words together every day or you go to bed hungry somehow. So go on a writing diet. Put it away. Sometimes the writing benefits from a little neglect anyway, a bit if steeping and stewing. 5— Finally, drag an old manuscript out of the files and start tweaking it. This never fails with me. That ten-year-old essay on 9/11? The article in NetZine about Girl Scout cookies? The piece about nuclear non-proliferation for which you won the Nobel? They can all be tweaked, trust me. Are there any worse tweakers and massagers than writers? I think not. I can take a week with copy for a business card. It’s why writers get paid per word rather than by the hour. Hope this helps. Writer’s block is a real thing, but there are ways to meet the monster and move on.
