GETTING AROUND A BLOCKAGE

Writer’s block. You’ve all heard of it. It’s that time when you want to write, but the words just won’t come. Your muse has departed, and left you… wordless.

POPPYCOCK

Excuse my language. I do not believe in writer’s block. Neither do these people.

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
– Louis L’Amour

or

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
– Jack London

Let me explain. Sometimes, writing flows. Sometimes, writing doesn’t flow. The reasons? I have no idea – it could be a combination of mental state, tiredness level, enthusiasm, other things happening in our lives… many, many things. And it would be very easy to kowtow to our feelings. And it is made easier by giving those feelings a name.

Writer’s Block

Writers talk about it a lot. It seems to be a common problem.

But waaay back, when I was thinking I’d quite like to do this thing for a living, I wondered about those days when the writing didn’t flow. What could I do about it?

One comment I heard was: “A brain surgeon doesn’t get surgical block.” And the obvious parallel is that when someone does a ‘normal’ job, they need to do that job, no matter what. And I’m sure on some days, surgeons don’t feel as well as they do on others. Our capability to do a job to the best of our ability varies day to day, but apart from being ill, a surgeon can’t phone in and say he doesn’t feel like doing his / her job.

So – what’s the solution?

Firstly – STOP USING THE TERM WRITER’S BLOCK

Next thing – tell yourself you’re going to do some writing at the time you normally do your writing.

Then find some way in which you can put characters, words, and sentences onto paper / in a file.

Here are some suggestions: write a blog post. Sometimes, writing non-fiction will break the deadlock where writing fiction won’t. If you’re not a blogger, and you don’t think you want to be, you can write about something else – maybe write about getting through writer’s block (like I’m doing now!)

OR (and I know this worked with a friend I helped) pick a tiny portion of your viewpoint. It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you can see from where you write, but focus on one small portion of your view. Here’s a thing I’ve found useful – extend both arms in front of you, and form a rectangle with the first finger and thumb of each hand. It’s like zooming in on a camera. Don’t choose your view point. That may sound strange, because you’re naturally going to want to choose something interesting to write about. Don’t do that. Bear with me. Extend the arms, form the viewpoint, and look. Really, really look.

Okay, let’s do a test, right now. I have a viewpoint. It’s a small portion of the wall in front of me. So now, let’s write 50 words on what I see. Only 50 words. Be as eloquent or lyrical or poetic as you like.

A shadow falls across the wallpaper, from black to grey to lighter grey to… the off-white wall. But the wall is not one flat colour. There are patters, swirls and whirls and lines and curves, surface texture embossed with semi-random shapes. They make no sense. And yet, suddenly…

There you go. Exactly fifty words on the wallpaper on my wall. It ain’t gonna win no Pulitzer, nor am I going to publish it.

There is a stage 2, where we enlarge our viewpoint slightly. Bend your arms, form that viewpoint again, and look. Really look. Look throughout the restricted viewpoint, noting what you see, all the details. Now, write 100 words on what you’ve seen through that viewpoint. You can do this. You wrote fifty words a moment or two ago. You just need to write a few more, and now I’ve given you a MUCH bigger thing to write about!

Okay. Done that? Guess what, you don’t have writer’s block!