In fact, you needn't fear it at all.
Here's the good thing about a writer's block. It isn't a stop sign. It isn't a wall. It's a "block," one that often can impede your progress when you're on the wrong path. That means it's small and manageable, and often productive, in the grand scheme of things. Inconvenient, maybe, but in the end it's simply an obstruction in your path that you have to figure out a way around, usually to make your story *stronger* as you develop your writing skill.
Picture yourself on a road, toodling along, listening to the radio, making excellent time on the way to wherever you are going. Let's pretend that you're on the first day of a long vacation, and you have plenty of time to spare. If you're on this highway and you hit an obstruction in your path, like - say - a big beam prohibiting passage, you might have the luxury of sitting in your car and chatting with your passengers, waiting for someone else to come along and remove the blockage so that you can resume your journey, usually at the convenience (mercy) of someone else.
If you're a truck driver who has a deadline to meet, whose money depends on how quickly you can get from Point A to Point B, you don't have the luxury to wait around. It's up to you to find/create a workaround. You'll take the nearest exit. You'll find a detour around your original, planned path, to get to where you need to go by the time you're scheduled to be there. And as someone who is trained to look several car lengths ahead to plan around these kinds of inevitable delays, you're prepared at all times to economize your time so you can make these changes accordingly, with as little inconvenience as you can manage.
Working writers are like truck drivers. They have deadlines to meet. They don't have time to wait for an elusive muse to show up on the scene and remove the blockage. They have to finagle their way around these obstacles. It's you against Writer's Block, and you have to win if you want to finish your project. The when and how is ultimately up to you.
Uncomfortable Truth Ahead: The quickest way to fight your way around Writer's Block is to WRITE your way out of it.
Consider this your runway. Every writer in the world wants to soar through the air, flying gracefully and forcefully through space, trailing behind them each perfect word that appears flawlessly and effortlessly after the other. Truth is that amounts for maybe 25-30% of your writing experience. Most of the time you're on the ground, waiting for clearance, preparing your vessel for the journey ahead and planning for any contingency. That means how effective your creative flight is and how long it lasts usually depends on two things. One, how generous your muse happens to be and two, how prepared you are for the journey.
I can't help you with your muse, she's going to be as temperamental as she's going to be. I can, however, give you some tips in planning, which is generally under your control. I've written both by the seat of my pants, with no clear direction of where I wanted to go between the first page and the last scene, as well as with an outline. Without question, I've always, always, had better luck fending off Writer's Block with an outline. It's a road map of where you need to go, and you usually figure out a lot of the pitfalls when you plan out your story ahead of time.
Some writers feel this inhibits creativity, but that's not the case. Your characters will jump off the page and throw your outline into the wood chipper regularly and without a hint of apology. The point is having an objective every single time you sit down to write. I use chapter-by-chapter outlines. I write it before I write anything else. (Some writers like to do a lot of prep work ahead of time, including character analyses, but we'll get to that in a minute.) In one sitting I go through the story in my head, like I'm watching a movie. I need to know, step by step, where I'm going. I know what beats I have to hit and where, so I plan them accordingly, building the story with pretty basic notes of what I want to accomplish in each scene. Here's an example from my latest book, BACK FOR SECONDS.
Chapter One:
Begin with scene leaving the family home, meet Russell, make it tense, zero respect, lots of bitterness. Kids are devastated, particularly Kari. Joely and her children return home from to her mother’s house. Get to meet Lillian and Faye right in the restaurant, along with Xander Davy. He prompts a smile from Kari. That night he leaves with one of the customers from the restaurant, Joely’s mom explains that he likes the ladies and the ladies like him. It immediately puts her off. Sweet scene with youngest daughter – strained goodnights with older kids.
Chapter Two:
Joely is ready to go back to work. Problem: she’s been a stay-at-home mom for twelve years, and keeps running into obstacles. She is no longer an attractive candidate for her chosen field in management, and needs a certain income to support her family. That Xander is a bit of a showoff with his money only puts her off even more. It’s clear she doesn’t like him. It’s clear that’s not what he’s used to. Kari, however, lights up at the restaurant where they eat nightly. Introduce Mason.
Chapter Three:
Several rejections later and Joely ends up baking her feelings. Her mother is overjoyed with her product, saying that she should do that for the restaurant. She tells her mother no, she’d rather make it on her own. It’s bad enough they have to stay in their house. The sooner she gets a job, the sooner she gets her freedom. Her grandmother ends up cooking with her at home. She’s a feisty gal full of advice and good humor, especially when it comes to her strained relationship with her daughter.
Chapter Four:
Joely drops the kids off with their father, who makes it a point to wave his new relationship (his former affair) under her nose. Joely decides to head to a bar with her BFF Novanna, who has nothing good to say about Russell, even though their husbands share a practice. Cheating is a deal breaker. Period. She convinces Joely to scope out a new man, a hot meaningless affair to remind her what it is to be her own woman. She ends up running into Xander. After a disastrous dance where their personalities clash, she retreats back to the house, where she bakes goodies, getting creative with the decorating.
If you've read BACK FOR SECONDS, then you can see where the story ventured off on its own, following its own unique flow in the narrative. The outline that plants my butt in the chair is not carved in stone, there's plenty of wiggle room to venture outside the lines where I need to. You find your own groove as you delve further into the story. An outline is more of a guideline where you're going, so that you can *keep* going. So I throw random, vague scene ideas in the mix I think will further the story I want to tell, but leave enough room there to let the muse do her thing.
She's more compliant than you'd think.
Once that initial plan is in place, it gives me a writing schedule (usually at least one chapter, maybe two, per day,) which means I can finish a first draft in a month or less. If I get stuck, say, like when my characters jump ship from the outline and get caught up doing their own thing, then I delve deeper into their motivation, to keep the flow of action as organic as possible. It has to build upon itself, one thing upon the other. Here's where you can refer to your character analyses, if you've written them, or write them in addition to the outline, whenever you need an extra push to get past that dreaded blinking cursor. You can also do more research. If your characters live in Los Angeles, research Los Angeles and use that in your story. Find a place, give them an activity, throw them into a scene and just see what they do. If they're a doctor, research a case that might pertain to their occupation and fit it into the story. If they're famous or rich, take the afternoon and get balls deep in a Biography hole on TV, to figure out what kinds of situations they've found themselves in and knock your characters around accordingly. Find a way to "show" what you need to say, incorporating your central theme or message in deeper layers.
(Some writers even prefer a writing project aside from the one they're working on, such as a blog post, etc., just to get the juices flowing. Ahem.)
The trick is to find *something* to write about, even if you end up scrapping it later.
See, that's the biggest lie that Writer's Block whispers in your ear. Most of us hit a standstill when we feel that what we're writing doesn't match what we want to say. The words are all wrong, or simply don't come at all. But even a less stellar word is one more towards your destination. There are a lot of things you can fix in the rewrite process. (We'll go over that in a future blog.)
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten was, "Don't get it right. Get it written."
Writers' Block, Shmiter's Block, that's your job. Get it written. So plan ahead. Research, research, research. Write your way out of it.
Now get cracking.
No comments:
Post a Comment