A Discourse on Writer's Block (or: Wherein the Author Hates his Stories with the Fire of A Thousand Suns) · 2:56am Sep 18th, 2016
I'm sure you've been there, too: You're writing something, and you keep spending time on it, and every time you stop and check your wordcount, it hasn't changed much. Or, you spend most of your time working on the story by not working on it, instead sitting there and brainstorming and/or cursing various aspects of the story and/or yourself for just not getting it bloody written.
As I sit here grumbling about no fewer than three stories stuck in that state, I want to share some thoughts about what I think that means as part of the creative process, and hopefully help both myself and others through this kind of problem.
Pictured: Dem Feelz
What is writer's block? Personally, I don't believe in it--at least not in the way it's typically described. I think the phenomenon we call writer's block is a symptom of a couple different kinds of problems, any or all of which might be in play at a given time for a given author writing a given story. Among the usual suspects are:
* Fatigue (mental/physical)
* Environment (time/comfort)
* Difficulty visualizing the story's end
* Lack of clarity about each character's growth, change, and movement in the story
Issues 1 and 2 can make it physically (or mentally or emotionally) difficult to perform the physical act of inserting butt into chair and fingers onto keyboard and achieving anything worthwhile. They're certainly doing that for me personally right now. This month at work I'm part of two lovely projects that are both trying to deliver cool new things to anxiously-waiting people in... like, a matter of days, which is causing some serious brain-drain as I try to navigate the roadblocks on the way to making it happen. At home, we're currently settling into a new family schedule fueled by the arrival of baby a few months ago, the onset of the school year for our oldest, and my wife returning to work a few weeks ago--all of which is a major drain on time. So basically, my situation right now with items 1 and 2 is kind of like the classic Accept song, Balls to the Wall:
Okay, okay, I was totally just dying for an excuse to insert some 80s metal
The thing is, though, I still tend to view issues 1 and 2 as the lesser pair of difficulties on my list above. Sure, you need to actually be able to sit and write if you're ever going to get anywhere. But, let's say you have the time (and/or space) to write, and you're adequately rested (and/or equipped with sufficient coffee). The question remains: Do you know what you're trying to write in the first place? Granted, some projects lend themselves more to spontaneity and discovery, and if you're not burdened with drains on your time and energy, you've got freedom to explore them. But if you throw issues 1 and 2 back into the mix, then good luck flying just by the seat of your proverbial writing-pants!
Okay, okay, that metaphor got away from me a bit, but it's all the cider's fault!
Again, I look at issues 3 and 4 as the real killers, especially as you start getting into writing longer works. Part of the reason is that there's less opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot by messing those up with shorter stories (or, perhaps there's just less foot to shoot in a short story).
When I approach a story of any length, one of the first and most important questions is to determine who is my character who wants something? Whether the protagonist or not, it's hard to deny that the character with the greatest desire is going to be a prime mover in the story, because they're going to try to influence the world and the characters around them to help make their goals become reality. (I guess this is some item #4 stuff, but let's take it out of order, because cider!)
Right now, in To Serve In Hell, it's (hopefully) pretty obvious that the mysterious stallion is the fellow with the single biggest quantity of desire, even if it's not yet clear exactly what he wants or how he's going to go about getting it. But something I learned during some dark months of struggling to figure out To Serve In Hell's plot in more detail was that in a longer story, part of the plot's dynamism comes from having more than one character with strong desires and a will to work toward them. I mean, it seems blindingly obvious when I write it out like that, but it was something that completely changed the way I looked at the story--and that greatly improved my ability to start writing it again. I think as I approach these other stories that are stuck, I need to challenge myself more to figure out what all the characters want to get out of their situations, rather than treating the supporting characters as mere support. I think that can be scary and frankly offensive sometimes, though, as that creates the possibility for a side character to come in and disrupt your long-term vision for a story by doing a much better job of pursuing their passions than what you'd envisioned for even the protagonist(s). But, within reason, more words is good words--if you can get a desperately stuck story un-stuck by letting a supporting cast member steal a little limelight, what have you got to lose?
Pictured: The character I need to let save one of my stories, because she is offering/threatening to do so, even though THAT WAS NEVER THE PLAN!
I kind of skipped over item #3 there, because hopefully you should start out knowing where a story is going from the get-go. Cuz if you don't, then woe be unto thee! There's absolutely nothing worse than the sinking feeling of having cool scenes and cool ideas that don't add up to anything more than a hodgepodge of cool in your head. I've actually got a story like that right now that is vexing me; its chapter 1 promises much, but I haven't a ruddy clue how to deliver on it. Again, though, for this one I might look at the characters and their goals as a way of helping to pull myself out of the mire; if the plot isn't doing much to influence the characters (because you don't really have a plot), then you may as well go whole-hog with letting the characters drive the plot.
In saying that, though, I'm actually taking a stand that is very much opposite one made by Stephen King in his nonfiction book On Writing, which was given to me many years ago and which offered the sage advice of an indisputable master of his trade, which I struggled with and ultimately failed to apply successfully to my own writing. I envy the hell out of King (or really anyone) who can write a story by putting two characters together in a room and letting who they are as characters drive everything else. I struggle mightily to do that, and for me, that can never be Plan A. However, I think I'm coming around to the thought that it might be a usable Plan B if I've got a relatively strong setting and characters, but no sense of impetus whatsoever for the plot.
Comments mini-game: Post "Taco" if you actually read all this garbage!
Ye dogs that one is a killer, though.
Okay friends, now it's your turn: Any deep thoughts about writer's block? Currently struggling with it? Managed to cure it while adding two inches to your duck by clicking this banner now?!?! 
Fun fact: I just cracked something that was stumping me in my current story immediately before seeing this blog. I was at a complete loss for what to do with Rarity for the second half of the chapter, but for some reason, the words flowed just now. Some combination of the right blend of fatigue poisons in my headmeats, the looming self-imposed deadline, and my mind slowly chewing away at it in the background unraveled the knot. I can't guarantee it will work for everyone—it doesn't usually work this way for me—but it's an amusing bit of synchronicity.
I always make sure I have a complete outline (many times written backwards, from the ending to the beginning) before I begin, thus avoiding writer's block. And I only post the story once it's completely finished.
I am horrible at outlining things. I've yet to find a perfect solution for me yet. Lately I've been thinking over a piece (that's been bugging me for years really) I want to write for remembrance day and just trying to lay this thing out is putting me off.
As to the block, I have no advice there. All I've accomplished is through spouts of midnight inspiration, of which only one full story came to fruition nearly 3 years ago soooo.
Also taco.
Ever since I actually started writing stories that would be seen by the masses, I don't use the term "writer's block" -- I agree that it's a lot more complex than that. Instead, I just curse my own laziness. For my last few short stories, I already had an idea where I wanted to go, but wasn't always sure how to get there, so I just went at it brute-force, writing as little as a sentence a day, hoping something would click. The fact that I managed to finish them proves that, even if nothing "clicked", I could at least fake it to the point of creating something presentable.
For longer stories, too many years of college taught me even a simple outline is your friend. The more detailed, the better, especially if you're writing a complex genre like Mystery. Of course, having everything mapped out like that runs the risk, at least for me, of the story feeling too clinical and academic.
Numbers 3 and 4 really are the killers, especially 4. I can think of at least two LONG stories I've written that I stopped shortly before the end because I wasn't sure how to write the penultimate chapter. What's the point of knowing where you're going if you can't figure out how to get there? It's all the more annoying when this happens 50,000+ words in because I didn't think everything through before starting. This is why, with one irritating exception, I only post either one-shots or multichapter stories where each chapter can function on its own. It is my plan to write longer stories, but I want to be damn sure I know where I'm going and that the internal logic is sound before I even start. That requires an outline more detailed than what I already have.
I'm afraid I can't give any advice beyond what you've already said. All I can say is that many of my oneshots DO run on that "write by the seat of your pants" thing. It's not a method I recommend anyone use (myself included), but if your story is going to be silly anyway, the spontaneity can help. It requires really knowing your character(s).
It's funny. I didn't start out as a prose writer; my "creative" journey began nearly 20 years ago making comic strips -- one-panels, then short strips, then full pages. In comics, it's easier to power through a half-baked idea by throwing the proverbial pie (or in my case, a cactus), at least if your work is absurdist to begin with. You can't do that with letters on a page -- well, I've never found a way to pull it off.
Taco.
There's no such thing as writer's block. Nobody can be a writer and claim writer's block! Nobody learns to be a writer by sitting at a computer and checking the word count all day! We live this job! It's something we are not something we do! When a writer comes up to a blank piece of paper he knows he'd better create or someone else is going to create that story for themselves! But all anyone else ever sees is the final product and then they get to go off to their fan pages and music sites and their fantasy sports and they can live a million adventures in a single day! We have one long piece of paper to get their attention... and it lasts us our whole lives. We mess it up... and we're erased.
Ahem. Felt like doing a version of The Hard Way there.
Um... typically I just get mad at the computer and my hands for not typing correctly and so I go and clean or work on the yard or something until I can gather my wits about me again. If a story isn't coming to me I just start working on another story or do a blog. Sometimes you end up with something better than what you were working on in the first place. It's important to keep copies though of every idea you've had. You never know when you might want to revisit a tale or two.
On longer works an outline can help but, even then you have to be flexible with it. Sometimes you may find that the story you were going to tell just no longer works for you. It happens all the time, however, if you can find some moments in there you can shift the story to suit your new goals potentially and turn it into something else.
Frog Dog Taco.
I'd try to give advice, but my own writer's block has been longstanding.
In my case, the characters taking over the story and turning it into something completely different than I had originally intended to write. That happens to me a lot. The characters almost invariably take over and tell me how the story is supposed to go. That's why I sit down to write a silly little clopfic, and end up with an epic exploration of interpersonal relationships and the nature of
humanityequinity.C.S. Lewis said that when he writes, it starts as pictures in his head, and then he has to figure out how to write a story that explains the pictures. The problem with writing that way is, as you noted, a whole lot of stuff that goes nowhere. At the least, though, a few of them can be turned into interesting character studies or vignettes.
4215902
Celestia knows I've tried that, but it never works for me. The story I sit down to write pretty much makes the outline useless before I get a few pages in. Mind you, I don't write linearly, and I don't generally write highly-plotted stories like mysteries or thrillers anyway. I tend to stick with slice-of-life, romance, and stream-of-consciousness. I know how I want the story to start, and where I want it to go; but all the fiddly bits in the middle just sort of happen in ways I'm still not sure I understand.
Sorry I haven't kept more of a discussion going here; been under the weather for the last ~36 hours, and I'm just now (maybe) pulling out of it.
Special bonus tacos to our minigame winners 4215270, 4215902, and 4216293!
4217662 / 4215902 / 4215270 / 4215221 -- I've had a hit-or-miss relationship with outlining at various points myself. When it works, it works; it brings clarity about goals, character development, plot arc, etc., and it gives you great confidence as you set out to actually write the story. The flip-side, though, is that I've sometimes found it decreases my enthusiasm to write a story; like I've been sitting on a given story's outline for more than a year, and I've just about reached the point where I'm going to let the thing go, because I can see from the outline that it's not that great of a story. But the original spark of the idea still makes me want to write it; I just can't seem to develop it to the point where it doesn't suck.
And I'm a hypocrite when I say that, because my default advice for struggling writers comes straight outta NaNoWriMo and/or Shia LaBeouf: Write hard, write fast, and fix it when it's written. Don't over-fix it in your head, because it's never gonna happen if you do.
I still stand by that advice for the most part (and 4216597, it's still pretty much what I've got... well, that and the encouragement that your stuff turns out pretty well
). But, over the last year, I've run into two things that can make it a little more complicated: Time and story length.
In recent months I've been kind of hung-up on wanting to focus on "good" stories (instead of taking risks on stories that are more ambitious but might need more fixing) because I don't have a lot of writing time, and I want to come away from my time feeling like I know I've written something worthwhile. I think a lot of people can relate to that on some level; it's a variation on the reason why people are afraid to start writing at all. But the advice I'd give anyone, and which I now turn on myself, is just to do it; reach the point where anyone else would give up, but you're not... you get the picture.
So then it's just a matter of actually taking that advice, and the risk, and maybe writing a dumb piece of crap.
There are certainly worse mistakes in life than writing a bad story. I would actually point at my story Ghost Dusters as an instance where I just sort of slapped something together in a hurry and hit publish. But I don't really regret writing it, much as I might wish to have tied its various pieces together into a more satisfying package.
The other thing I mentioned is story length, and that's been a fascinating thing to get reacquainted with as I've worked on To Serve In Hell. My pre-pony writing days saw a number of ambitious attempts at writing long sci-fi/fantasy novels that are generally only fit to be hermetically sealed away and fired into the heart of the sun, however much I may love the ideas and the universe that I tried to develop in them. But one of them wasn't so bad, and perhaps as you'd expect, it was the one where I went into it with the strongest pre-work to develop the characters, and to lay out the basic structure of the story. I'd hesitate to call it an "outline," except in the way 4216293 talks about them; providing sufficient detail to get what you need out of it, but not so rigid as to preclude changes as things move along. My long months idle with To Serve In Hell were spent doing a lot of brain-wracking as I worked toward a similar sort of pseudo-outline. I'm not sticking to it rigidly; in fact, some things have already changed in the short time the story's been reactivated, which is part of why I need some time off to rebuild part of the structure. But in summary, I do think longer stories benefit from some sort of "living outline," with the expectation that things might go in different directions as you get in there and actually write them.
4217662, it sounds like you get what I mean when i say it's offensive to have a side-character hijack your story. Because then the story you write ends up not being the story you planned to write, right? But again, I think this is a point where being open to spontaneous growth and development is probably a good thing. I wouldn't bank on characters suddenly popping up and telling you how to write a given story, but too often I try to fight it and hold to my vision, which is stupid.
Put differently: If an outline is used as a tool to help get you moving when you're stuck and to guide a story while "normal" things are happening in its development, that's good. If it's meant to be a complete blueprint of EVERYTHING EVAR about the story, that could be misguided. And if the story starts changing in ways that demand re-examination of the outline... well, that could be good or bad, but it isn't bad by default.
4215221 The idea of your backwards-outline thing is interesting. It seems to combine the best aspects of knowing where your story ends with knowing how your characters get there. Isn't it tricky to develop that, though? Still, I may have to try that sometime...
4214998 Oh I hear ya, there are all kinds of things like that that can influence my writing ability. Finding the right setting is crucial for me, and sometimes it takes some experimentation to get just the right combo. Rarely do I get into the groove on my desktop at home; it's usually the laptop that makes the magic happen, but occasionally my iPhone emerges as the weapon of choice. But it gets weirder from there: like the heart-to-heart scene at the end of The One Where Discord Gets All The Mares was written on my laptop, in my car, in the parking ramp at work, late after work one day. At one point a coworker walked past my car and gave me the weirdest look... and what could I say in my defense? After all, I was busily working on a weapons-grade My Little Pony shipping scene.
4218246
Well, I'm working on sleep. I figure once I start getting enough sleep I'll start producing again... I wonder if chronic insomnia is responsible?
4218250 That can definitely be a drag on things. I find it's kind of like the Ballmer Peak; for me a little bit of reduced sleep is initially a boon to productivity, but things get bad fast.
I spent one year during college, and one year after, basically not able to sleep, and it was hell.
I held off getting anything prescription to deal with it because I was afraid of potential side-effects, until I realized they couldn't be much worse than what I was living with. Now I just get a couple of Ambien from my doc like... once every other year.
I take like half the minimum dose, and I only use it when I hit a hard insomnia streak that I can't seem to pull out of naturally, and it's worked OK for me.
I hope yours gets better!
4218250 - Ugh. Insomnia sucks. I'm a night-owl at the best of times (it's half past midnight as I post this). At one point my first year of college, my sleep schedule got so bizarre that I ended up missing a major exam (I'd studied for it, but ended up oversleeping). My professor let me make it up, but it was one of the most embarrassing things I ever dealt with during my tertiary education.
4218277 - Hope you feel better soon.
(hey, you said the same to me not long ago)
Thinking about it again, as you said outlining doesn't help you -- FWIW, I only do detailed outlines when I know I need to keep specifics in order. That backward-outline thing sounds cool; I'm kinda doing something similar for one of my stories. And yes, traditional outlining has kept me from writing a story at least a few times, because I realized there was no way I could make my idea good, or (more often) found I couldn't come up with an ending.
Whenever I'm stuck and going at a story brute-force isn't working, sometimes a simple change of perspective can help. I'll move on to a different story, or listen to different music. I don't do outside often (summer in the South is pretty unbearable… also I dislike leaving my house), but I may pop off to the park nearby and jabber to myself like a madman from time to time. Weirdly enough, switching from Word to TextEdit for my initial drafts did wonders, because my subconscious couldn't become obsessed with formatting or page breaks or a running word count; the story could just be, and that's pretty liberating.
"Write fast"? Yeah, that's the one thing I can never do. I can certainly agree with "write hard" though.
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4218277
I've been managing on about 3 hours or less per day for the last several months, with some recoup on the weekends, like maybe 6-8. Friday my Doc had me start melatonin and some kind of antihistamine to konk me. The last few days... I'd forgotten what it was like to feel rested and actually awake.
And I know all about college and no sleep; I once spent 48 hours non-stop writing reports to get everything done by the end of the semester. But I don't think I can manage those kinds of shenanigans anymore.