Which Form of Writer's Block Do You Have?

This is a guest post written by Deborah Gallardo and it is a tie-in to the discussion on Writers? Block. I am pleased to welcome Deb to the Fiction Blueprints blog. I love her writing style and I got so much from this post. Please do comment at the end so Deb can know how much you enjoyed the post. ~ Sharon

One thing guaranteed to get my dander up is to hear some writer, claiming to be an authority, assert that writer?s block does not exist. I find such blanket statements insensitive at the very least and downright arrogant at worst.

Most times those who make this assertion are ?working writers,? folks who sit down every single day, facing deadlines for producing copy, without the luxury of being able to say to their editor, ?Sorry. I?m blocked. I can?t turn in a column today.?

And it?s true. Working writers as a group are the least likely candidates to encounter writer?s block.

Three Things Working Writers Have in Common.

• Firstly, they have developed a discipline that other writers may lack.
• Secondly, they have developed a habit of writing every day, generally about the same time of day.?
• Thirdly, they have developed techniques or rituals that get them started writing, that prime the pump, so to speak, although in today?s world, not many people encounter pumps that need priming.

Your Brain as a Water Pump

When you think about it, getting water to flow against gravity isn?t such an easy thing to do, unless you have a way to effect a change in pressure inside water pipes. A quick start is to pour a cup of water down into the pipe. This process is known as ?priming the pump.?

Just as old-fashioned water pumps need priming, so do our writers? minds. If we can learn techniques that jumpstart our brains, we make our job a lot easier because the ideas will start to flow. And if we haven?t already done so, we need to learn what working writers know and do.

1. Develop our own brand of self-discipline.

2. Cultivate the habit of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair (as Hemingway put it) every day without fail, even if only for 10 minutes.

3. Come up with personalized techniques to carry us over the tough spots when our creative well seems to have run dry. These can be free-writing, writing prompts or something along the lines of picking three random words and using each one in a paragraph or short story.

When You?re Running on Empty

The truth is, there is nothing quite as scary to a writer as having nothing to say. In my experience, this is related to self-doubt. ?What if I can?t think of anything to write? What if I?m really not good enough??

Likewise, there is nothing that makes a writer feel more vulnerable than coming face to face with the specter of failure. Here?s the thing, and it?s going to be hard to hear. If we?re not failing, we?re not reaching high enough. We?re playing it safe. This is why, when it comes to writer?s block, self-confidence is often to blame.

My New Hero, Dr. Bren? Brown

And here?s another important fact. It comes from my go-to authority in the psychology of creativity (my term, not hers), Dr. Bren? Brown, who became an overnight YouTube sensation when she gave a TEDx talk on her groundbreaking research. I recommend you look her up. It will change your life.

[Editor's Note: The YouTube Video of the TEDx talk is at the end of this post.]

Okay, here?s that fact: ?Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity, innovation, and change. It?s also the birthplace of joy, faith and connection. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There?s nothing more vulnerable than that.?

Exposed!

The multi-award-winning author of ?Jacob Have I Loved,? and ?Bridge to Terebithia,? Katherine Paterson, confessed to me once that creating her stories was like walking naked into a room full of people

The image is an apt one, because writing exposes the deepest parts of our being. Even if we don?t write our life story and turn it into fiction, from everything we are, from our deepest thoughts and fears and joys, to the people we love, hate or are fascinated by, bits and pieces of those all find their way into our storytelling.

So when we struggle coming up with things to write about, it?s not that we don?t have ideas. It?s that some ideas make us feel more vulnerable than others. We feel exposed, and fear of rejection is primal. It touches us at the very core of our being.

Not Good Enough. Not Perfect Enough.

There?s another side to our worry over what other people will think. It?s fear that even we won?t like what we write. So now, let?s talk about what happens if you?re actually writing and you find yourself hating your words.

1. You?re too close to your work. Set it aside for at least a day. Longer if possible. And the more pages we?re talking about, the longer you should let it grow ?cold? so that when you read it next, it will be with fresh eyes.

2. Don?t confuse striving for excellence with perfectionism. The former is healthy. The latter is not, mostly because perfect does not exist, and striving for the unattainable is a good way to end up needing a therapist.

3. When you?ve put your work away and revisit it, you will find things you like and things you loathe. STOP. Do not even backspace to make corrections until you have saved that file under another name. I?ve started appending a date to my file names. You will thank me when you?ve done some drastic editing, but want to include a section you got rid of. Do not begin editing until you have created and saved a NEW version of ANY document.

4. Consider saving to a special folder in DropBox or EverNote. These cloud-based programs provide a central storage area accessible from any of your web-enabled devices. Plus they provide a backup location. I recently lost access to 25 years of writing archives because of an external hard drive failure. When your backup fails, what then?

Are You Making This Mistake?

You?re working away on your first draft and then you get up for something to drink. When you come back, what?s the first thing you do? If you?re like most people, you start reading from the beginning. HUGE MISTAKE. Here?s why.

Writing is a right-brain (creative/intuitive) function. Editing and rewriting are left-brain (analytical/logical) functions. The two don?t play well together because they have conflicting goals.

Our subconscious mind is our muse, and s/he must be cajoled out of hiding and begged to provide us with useful creative genius. When she?s on a roll, you don?t want to do anything except to take down every word she gives you. Don?t interrupt the flow.

Bear in mind that you are creating a rough draft, the same way an artist creates a quick rough sketch. Don?t concern yourself with formatting, typos, misspellings, etc. And when you know there?s a better word but it won?t come to you, don?t open up the thesaurus. Just type a series of underscores and in parentheses include the word that?s not quite right, then continue letting the words flow. It?s the best gift you can possibly give yourself and your writing.

The ?P? Word.

If you?re a free spirit like I am, you probably hate to plan. But I?ve learned the hard way that I must do at least minimal preparation or my writing lacks cohesion. The method you use to plan should be according to your personal style or personality.

The subconscious thinks in images, not words. This is why a mind map is useful for recalcitrant muses. Mind maps are just visual enough to fool our muse into thinking it?s an image.. And it?s the interesting connections that make our writing appealing and saleable.

The ?O? Word.

Outlines are useful to our left brain, which needs something concrete, like a timeline, to provide structure. Here?s the thing about outlines. There are two primary views on their effectiveness.

For authors who must plan each scene in excruciating detail before they ever start getting their story down on paper or their computer?s screen, an outline is a foregone conclusion. And you will find that they are convinced every single writer must outline first.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are writers who will absolutely shut down when faced with creating an outline. By the time they complete it, they feel like they?ve already told the story and there?s no point in developing it now. For these writers, an outline is a straight jacket. They prefer to grab a starting point, an ending point, some back story, some characters, a scenario and then they set off on a journey of discovery. To them it?s much like archaeologists uncovering antiquities. They carefully brush off the dirt and sand from ancient artifacts they?ve discovered, exposing untold treasures.

The differences boil down to style and personality. There is no single right way to create a story.

However?

You sensed that was coming, right? A little bit of structure is necessary and a little holistic thinking is, too.

I?m of the loosey-goosey variety, in case you didn?t figure that out. But if I don?t have guideposts, I waste a lot of time going down rabbit holes. About 20 years ago I wrote a 100,000-word romantic suspense novel. Had I outlined it, the book would have been published by now, I have no doubt, because I would have detected the plot flaw that has kept it archived on my hard drive all these years.

I did, however, create two documents while I was writing it. I did this for my own sanity and it helped tremendously with workflow. One was a timeline that traced the characters? lineage all the way back to Colonial days: when they were born, married, gave birth to or sired a child, divorced and died. I also included other important document. In this simple document, I ?discovered? plot points I wouldn?t have thought of otherwise. The other document I created was a simple listing of events or scenes that other situations depended on. It wasn?t in any particular order, but rather as I thought of them. I added to the list constantly. Both were instrumental in getting it written.

A Side Note.

Now that I?m writing again, I?ve revisited this novel and I?m adapting it for the digital marketplace. People, in my opinion, are not looking for long novels anymore, at least not for the most part. I?m in the process, therefore, of breaking the story up into three sections to be published separately. And I may be changing the genre to erotica. We?ll see.

Your Muse.

For a middle grade children?s book I?ve been dabbling with for years, I went online and found photos of castle-like mansions. I recommend home building plan sites, because ultimately you?ll want to know the layout of any houses you might need. I also wanted some d?cor, and fortunately I found photos of actual homes based on those plans. I mixed and matched until I came up with what I wanted, then drew a complete floor plan, including closets, pantries and bathrooms.

Why? Because as I said before, my muse is visual, and she needs these details. As I was drawing my mansion floor plan, she found a way to make a series of secret passages. (Admit it. You?re fascinated by the idea of secret passages, too.) And when I drew the carriage house, she insisted secret passages be included there, as well. Not only that, she connected the passages from both buildings to a tunnel, which will make for some interesting and possibly scary situations.

Don?t be put off about my speaking of my muse as though she?s real. How could she not be? She is me in my unselfconscious state, my true subconscious who remembers everything I?ve ever felt, said, done, read, even dreamed. Our subconscious is smarter than our conscious mind.

So treat your muse with care or she may go into hiding until you cajole her out. Mine is partial to chocolate chip cookies. Whatever works.

One final thought.

It?s altogether possible that what we call writer?s block is Muse Block. Be sure to feed your muse lots of visuals as you brainstorm plot ideas and search for photos of people who represent your characters. And don?t forget the chocolate chip cookies.

~

Dr. Bren? Brown on Vulnerability

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To learn more about what I have to say about writer?s block, I invite you to visit The Story Ideas Virtuoso where you can download with my compliments ?Writer?s Block?Facing Down the Dreaded Blank Page? in the sidebar.

Deb has been blogging about writer?s block, creative writing, the psychology of writing, as well as tips and tricks for discovering the story ideas that are hiding in plain sight, and more since 2007. At the end of 2012, she retired from working for other people and moved across the country to southeastern Arizona, where she is writing full-time and learning to cope with an alien climate.

The latest writing accomplishment of which she is ecstatically proud is an Amazon review which she penned for the new film ?A Perfect Ending,? starring BarbaraNiven, John Heard and Morgan Fairchild. Deb?s review caught the attention of not only Niven and the film?s producer Marina Rice Bader, but also writer/director Nicole Conn. Conn?s comment at the end of the review is the kind of feedback every writer dreams of hearing.

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Source: http://www.fictionblueprints.com/which-form-of-writers-block-do-you-have/

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