This is number 133 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“HOW DO YOU HANDLE writer’s block? I just don’t have any ideas!”
False!
You have ideas. It’s part of being alive. So why can’t you just sit down and write them?
Contrary to popular opinion, I suffer from writer’s block on occasion. I have nearly a dozen partially drafted novels that I’ve set aside because I simply couldn’t continue them at the moment.
They include:
Promethien, Child of Earth: a sequel to The Props Master series (Devon Layne)
A Place Among Peers: a sequel to A Place at the Table (Nathan Everett)
Drawing on the Bright Side of the Brain: a sequel to Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain (DL)
Lay of the Land: a fourth volume in the Wonders of My World series (DL)
Immortal Eternal: a novel that explores what happens when people stop dying (NE)
Double Down: a novel about playing Blackjack in the 1980s-90s (DL)
Immortality: a novel about a guy who is given a drug that will extend his healthy life indefinitely, but doesn’t restore his youth (NE)
And several others that just landed in my ‘idea file,’ like Silicon Slum, The Burgundy Chamber, Heart & Soul, Means Motive & Opportunity, Pussy Pirates 2, Switching Places, Take My Wife, A Vampire’s Tale, and What Happens in Vegas. Ideas, ideas, and more ideas.
But I haven’t finished them because somewhere along the line, I got writer’s block. I didn’t know where to take the story next.
I wrote Nathan Everett’s (Wayzgoose) For Mayhem or Madness in 2020, as we were all experiencing the madness of COVID 19. I’d started a first draft as early as 2013, but I couldn’t focus on the story as I began my solo journey as a full time RVer. I had too many other things to focus on. So, I went back to it as I sat in my trailer, waiting to be released from the camp in Phar, Texas so I could finally go back north.
The story had been brewing in the back of my head for seven years. I knew what it was, how it began, and where it would end. It would come between For Money or Mayhem and For Blood or Money—another mystery for cyber detective Dag Hamar.
As I reached the end of the story, I glanced at my word count and discovered the entire manuscript was only about 40,000 words. To put that in perspective, most of my books are between 80,000 and 250,000 words. Even the popular November noveling challenge was for 50,000 words. This was scarcely enough to be a novella.
But I couldn’t think of anything else to write in it. Blank. And then I realized, it was finished!
I ended up publishing it as a novella rather than a full-length novel in September 2020 with less than 40,000. For Mayhem or Madness eBook is available on ZBookStore.
So, what do you do when you are suddenly faced with writer’s block? There are literally hundreds of suggestions available on the internet for breaking writer’s block. One popular method is to use a writing prompt. If you search for this on-line you will find several sources.
Let’s say, for example, that you are stuck with your main character facing a tough decision. You tune in for a writing prompt and receive, “Describe the scent of a blooming flower in springtime.” It’s the middle of winter in your story. Your character has never mentioned a flower in your entire story. Yet here you are asked to describe the scent.
You start thinking about the type of person your MC is. What would cause her to notice the scent of a flower? What would the setting be? When was she there? How long ago is this memory? What caused her to happen to think of that at just this moment? As you jot down your thoughts on the experience, it becomes clear to you that the only way the MC could possibly choose between the alternatives is X. You progress from writing about the scent of a flower to the outcome of her decision.
I know of people who use the same method in real life, even more now that AI is so willing to give people ideas out of context.
Another way to break the blockage is simply to consider the five senses and write about what the MC is experiencing at that moment through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
In my own experience, I more frequently find writer’s block in the form of a kind of logjam of ideas rather than a lack of ideas. This is more literally a blockage than an emptiness. What causes this kind of idea logjam?
First, you may have been overstimulated. You went out with friends. You read an interesting story. You saw a movie. You were just out driving your car when characters started talking (my favorite). Whatever the stimulation, you just have all these ideas built up and can’t choose among them.
Second, you may have become inspired. While that sounds like a good thing, authors often find they have been inspired to write something completely different than what they were working on. It’s the shiny object syndrome. They were working on one thing when they were suddenly inspired by a song they heard on the radio that reminded them of a person they met on a train who told them about their life, and now they simply have to write about that.
Third, you may have lost sight of the MC’s main goal in the story. Since the goal is not visible, there are dozens of paths stretching out before the MC and you can’t tell which one you should follow. They all look equally exciting (or equally boring).
When faced with this kind of logjam, the solution is to make a decision. Even if you make the wrong decision, you will be moving. You may need to revisit the decision later and see that you needed to take a different path, but that is what is so wonderful about writing: the story you wrote is not immutable. Authors somehow get into the mindset that they have to do it right or perfectly the first time out. As I indicated in a previous post, this is influenced by the advent of computer typing programs that make the first draft ‘look’ like publishable copy.
“Quod scripsi, scripsi.” What I have written, I have written. (John 19:22)
Wrong! What I have written is editable. It may come as a shock to some authors, but they are not transcribing the word of God in their novel. If you make the wrong decision then go back and change it later. Anything you write can be changed.
The important thing at this stage is to pick one (an idea)—even if totally unrelated—and write it.
This is also why many November novelists end up writing smut where it is totally inappropriate for their book. Not only is it an easy way to pad the word-count, but it is a way of breaking the logjam so words begin to flow again. The smut may be inappropriate for your children’s book, but you can (and should) edit it out later.
Speaking of editing, that’s next. Assuming you make it through to the end of your novel’s first draft, “It ain’t over till…”