Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips
To Overcome
Writer’s Block
1. Lower your standards at the beginning of the process.
Raise them later.
This advice, which some people apply to dating, was issued most
famously by poet William Stafford. He argued that high standards create a
threshold that inhibits writers from getting started. The key is to lower
your standards at the beginning of the process. Get that fantasy
of winning prizes or of capturing hearts out of your head.
2. Imagine the story before writing a
draft.
Writing begins long before your hands get moving. The more
head work you do before drafting, the easier the hand work will be.
Such mental preparation is a form of rehearsal, the kind we do to prepare for
asking someone on a date or a boss for a raise.
3. Rehearse the beginning by speaking
it to another person.
You can draft a story with your voice before you write it down with
your hands. All you need is a friend willing to listen and maybe ask a
few questions. Even an attentive dog will do, preferably a Jack Russell
terrier named Rex. Let the story emerge from your mouth, to your ears,
then to your hands.
4. Don’t write the story yet. Write a
memo to yourself about the story.
When you write to yourself, you lower your standards in a simple
and productive way. Once your hands get moving on an informal draft,
words begin to flow. The trick is to fool yourself into thinking that
your story is something else: a memo, a journal entry, a letter, a note
to a friend, a grocery list, anything that blows up the logjam.
5. Write as fast as you can for
ten minutes – without stopping.
Writers wait too long to start writing. They find a dozen
substitutes for writing, including eating, drinking, walking, shopping,
checking e-mail messages, and wasting time on Facebook. Even research can
become an excuse. Try writing early – and fast. Your early writing
– call it a “zero draft” – will teach you what you know and what you still need
to learn.
6. Tell the critical voice in
your head to “shut up!”
You need a strong critical voice during revision when you
standards will be at their highest. Listen to that negative nag too early
in the process and it becomes what psychologists call “the watcher at the
gate,” the negative force that wards off all creative impulses. Keep the
voice in the green room until you call it on stage for revision.
7. If you are blocked in your usual
writing place, try a new place.
Every writer needs about a half-dozen reliable places to
work. Here are mine, in order of comfort and productivity: desk at
work, desk at home, recliner in “man cave,” in airport waiting areas, on
planes, and at my mother-in-law’s kitchen table. Habitual behavior
usually helps writers, but when you’re stuck, don’t just sit there,
change your location.
8. Write on a legal pad.
Even preliminary drafts can have that finished look on a computer
screen, which is always dangerous. That clean look may artificially exalt
your standards too early in the process. Enter the yellow legal
pad. Nothing hand-written on yellow paper looks finished. You will
be amazed at how much less anxious you become by occasionally going old school
and using old tools: paper and pencil.
9. Get someone to ask you questions
about your story.
When I try to help writers get unstuck, I often rely on simple,
open-ended questions:
o
How’s it going?
How can I help you?
o
What are you thinking?
o
What’s your story about?
o
What happened? Who
did what?
o
What do you want your
readers to learn?
o
What most surprised you
about this?
o
What was the most
interesting you learned? The most significant?
10. Forget the beginning for
now. Write the ending first.
When you approach a roadblock, don’t be afraid to take a
detour. If you are stuck writing your lead sentences, try drafting a
passage that might end up in the middle. Or imagine where the work might
end. The novelist Katherine Anne Porter once said that she couldn’t begin
a story unless she knew the ending. “I know what my goal is,” she said.
“And how I get there is God’s grace.”
