How I Defeat Writer's Block · 9:17pm Aug 1st, 2013
Hey there folks. I've seen countless threads here where authors are desperately seeking ways to beat writer's block and it saddens me. Writer's block is a huge problem for us, isn't it? But it doesn't have to be. The vast majority of the advice I see to defeat writer's block is to stop writing. Go read a book, screw around on the Internet, watch TV, play a video game, go outside. Right. To me, that's a bit counter-productive. After all, I want to write. If I wanted to go read a book or something, I wouldn't be staring at a blank page desperately searching for ideas now would I? So to that end, I figured I'd give you a few ideas on how I defeat my writer's block and get a decent amount of good, quality wordsmithing in on top of that.
First, let's examine what writer's block is. Usually, writer's block comes in when you're stuck with a ton of ideas in your head, all extremely cool and great, but you have no idea how to connect them or relate them or anything. Well, that just won't do. The best thing I've found to do is to write a short little outline of the scenes I want to happen in the chapter I'm writing. Nothing complex or even all that detailed, but it gives me a springboard to go off of when I'm having trouble imagining what happens next. Here's an example from Chapter One of The Apple Tree:
Chapter One
1. Applejack and Apple Bloom deliver apples to ponies in Ponyville and meet TS on the road into Ponyville.
2. AJ and AB get invited to a lunch out.
3. AJ and AB go into town and deliver Apples. Characterization.
4. AB meets up with Scootaloo in Ponyville.
5. AB decides to get TS a gift to thank her for inviting her to a grownups' lunch.
Done. That's a pretty skeletal idea of what I want to happen, but it gives me a bit of structure to build upon or deviate from. If I get stuck on a scene, I can just move on to the next one then connect them later on. It works surprisingly well and I get a great average word count of about 4-5k words per chapter when I use this method. Otherwise, I end up getting a little lost in the narrative.
The key here is that writing is a discipline. Yes, we do it because we love to write and yes, it's all about artistic inspiration and all that drivel. But guess what? At the end of the day, the only way to get better at writing is to write. Write every day. Write as much as you can. The more you write, the less you'll have the problem of writer's block. Go to it my sweets! Go!
