Writers Block

Here I sit a scant 6 hours and change from the start of Nano, and I can feel a WB coming on. I mean, I'm more prepared than ever; I have 60 scenes identified, so if something goes stale, I can pivot to another scene and still make word count. I have even been working on my opening sentence (in my mind of course). Even with all this, I still feel sometime in the next 30 days I'll come down with Writer's Block. I shiver just writing those words.

So here's what I'm going to do. Whenever I feel a WB coming on, I'm going to introduce a new character in my story. Right there, in mid-sentence if I have to. In order of appearance are: An auto mechanic, Lost girl, neighbor looking to borrow a rug cleaner and a mail carrier with a COD letter. That's one WB per week. That's a good start.

Happy Writing everyone! May the WB's infect the region Naperville challenges in regional word war.

I've got the OPPOSITE! I'm all geared up and ready to write NOW to the point where I've been running variations of my first line through my mind. Does it count as having started ahead if I haven't written it down? :V

Don't forget to write about sending your internal editor off somewhere. Writer's Block is often the result of him rearing his unwanted head and daring to criticize your lovely, lovely words. Send him off. Remind yourself that this is a first draft and you're allowed to use words that won't be in the final draft, you're just going for the broad strokes of your story. You'll get clever later. (You're probably being clever now, but you can't recognize it while you're worrying about word count, or when you've just written it. It takes time for true beauty to be appreciated.)

It's not Writer's Block to think for a few seconds or even a few minutes before writing the next sentence. That's just thinking. And since studies have shown that it's good to stand every 30 minutes at least, if you feel WB coming on, get out of your chair and walk around the room and try to picture what is happening in your story. Then go write it. Or write about squids and get free cookies. Or write about NaNoBots and see Tim grin. Or .... you get the idea.

I'm in a similar boat. I suddenly feel like my novel ideas are not good enough for a novel. So, I'm already dreading my writer's block. But, gotta push through it! Just write and keep writing. I'm just running out of ideas before I even start!

So that perfect opening line I had? I can't remember it.

I'm thinking instead of getting an early start tonight, I'm going to get a good night's sleep and get started tomorrow with some coffee at Caribou (timeframe unknown). Too many distractions here at home! Last year I wrote mostly during write-ins and at coffee shops, and I think it'll be similar this year.

Someone on Facebook gave me the opening line suggestion of "The night was moist." I ended up writing a little opening blurb that has absolutely nothing to do with my actual novel, but it was fun!

"The knight was moist, and he thought this rather unfortunate. The mud was creeping up further and further now, threatening to bury him as he continued sinking into the beaten ground. To his dismay, his horse had panicked and thrown him in the heat of battle, and so there he was. He wondered whether he would start to rust before someone came round to help him up."

I'm trying a new strategy for Writer's Block this year. When I hit it, I will find and pick a random object to start my next sentence with. My first object will be a paperclip.

The hardest part of writers block is writing through it. For me that's what I have to do, even if I turn my writer's block into my character's whining about how hard their task, situation, or problem is. I may also get up and get another cup of tea or some fresh air, but what works best for me is to keep on writing . . . especially when I don't want to.

Anobi wrote:
I'm trying a new strategy for Writer's Block this year. When I hit it, I will find and pick a random object to start my next sentence with. My first object will be a paperclip.

It could be a gold paperclip -- and given by an overly-enthusiastic annoying woman who acts like there's something really special about her gold paperclips. :)
Then it could be square blocks -- and given by a really tall guy who spends more time fixing bugs in his scripts than writing, even on the first day of November. :)
Then it could be someone who insists that you work squids into ...
wait, there's nothing random about us!

The original thought came to me when I was picking up some papers and a twisted metal paperclip fell out of the bunch. We don't even use those at work, (staples only,) so I have no idea what it was doing there, in that particular pile. It seemed so out of place, so random, so /fascinating/... and then the idea to use it to cure writer's block hit me.

'Remind yourself that this is a first draft and you're allowed to use words that won't be in the final draft, you're just going for the broad strokes of your story. You'll get clever later. (You're probably being clever now, but you can't recognize it while you're worrying about word count, or when you've just written it. It takes time for true beauty to be appreciated.)'

This is exactly what I've learned by doing Nano.

When I'm overwhelmed with the idea of making my story into something wonderful, I let myself ruminate for a sentence or two about how bad these words are. I leave it in the story between parenthesis. When I go back to revise, finding the words that describe how frustrated I was at that point in the writing and comparing that with the story words I was getting shows me first-hand the contrast between the writing's 'quality' and the emotion I was feeling as I wrote the words.

Writing about squids and getting cookies, or even Nanobots, is another great way to dispel the myth about the first draft being this perfect story. It's a malleable thing.

Oh, and it's fun. :)

Larkk wrote:

Writing about squids and getting cookies, or even Nanobots, is another great way to dispel the myth about the first draft being this perfect story. It's a malleable thing.

Oh, and it's fun. :)

If writing about squids and getting cookies or Nanobots isn't perfection, what is the point of being perfect? (Shameless plug for a Squiddish grin and maybe even a Nanobot despite my totally-joking suggestion that it would be 'fun' to destroy one yesterday. Really, it was just a joke. I can be trusted with a Nanobot or even several. Really.)

I agree about it just being a first draft, totally. And people may be surprised at how something that they thought was off-topic or rambling may fit in the story later. It may require moving it around during editing, and trimming it a bit, but words can be useful. That's why it's helpful to write a lot of them in November.

I must admit, that strategy worked better than I imagined. I cranked out 600 words in less than an hour! Now, to think of a new writing defibrillator...