Overcoming Writer's Block

One of the tips I like to give about overcoming writer's block is this: just write ANYTHING. There's a scientific term called "activation energy" that basically refers to the amount of energy needed to start a chemical reaction, which is usually a larger amount that it takes to maintain said reaction. Think of it like starting your car (this may or may not be an accurate description of activation energy; I'm a writer, not a scientist). The idea is that getting started is the hard part. After that, it's easier to keep going.

So in the context of writing novels, this means having your characters doing any sort of random, silly activities, even if it makes no sense to your overall story. Like, say you last left off with your protagonist having narrowly escaped from a treacherous dungeon with a number of serious injuries and no healing potions or spells, but you're not quite sure where to go from here (even though you have an outline - you do have one, right? - sometimes you find yourself having to fill in gaps along the way). Instead of banging your head against the keyboard several times before giving up for the day, simply switch gears and do something like this (paragraph breaks and lack of indentations are for blog format purposes):

Joel looked up to see an outstretched hand near his face. He realized he was lying prone on a hard, flat surface. He craned his neck a little further and saw that the hand belonged to Felicity.

"C'mon, dude, get up," she said.

"Um...what happened?"

"What do you mean, 'what happened'?"

Joel took Felicity's hand, and she helped him up. "The last thing I knew, I had escaped from the Caves of Wrath," he said. "But now, I'm..." He glanced around. To his left was a GameStop store. To his right, a Hot Topic. The distinctive smells of Cinnabon and Hot Dog on a Stick wafted through the air. "...at the mall?"

"Of course you're at the mall," Felicity said. "Where else would you be?"

"Um...outside the Caves of Wrath?"

Felicity shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about, dude." She sniffed. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I..." Joel inspected himself. He remembered having multiple lacerations on his arms and torso, and his standard Spectraland-issue vest had been torn to shreds. But now, he was wearing an intact T-shirt (short sleeved, green, with the Hyrule logo from The Legend of Zelda emblazoned on it), and his wounds were gone. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Good," Felicity said. "Well, let's get going."

"Where?" Joel asked.

"To Mount Doom."

"What?"

"I'm kidding," Felicity said. "To the shoe store. Remember? We're here to get you a new pair of Chucks."

"We are?"

"Hmm." Felicity narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Joel wasn't sure, but he decided not to pursue the matter any further. "Um...yeah," he said. "Yeah, I am. Let's go."

** Back to Blog Post **

See how that works? I just started writing anything - in this case, Joel and Felicity shopping for shoes at the mall - and ended up with 271 words, which is a little over one page and could very well have met my word count quota for the day (my most common previous quotas for the Joel Suzuki series were 400 or 500 words, but 250 was still considered not bad). And I could have easily kept going.

Besides getting you into a writing mode, there's an extra bonus to this exercise, which is that sometimes you may actually end up with something useable! Maybe not at this point in your manuscript, or even for this particular book, but possibly in the future (this has happened to me on multiple occasions).

So the next time you encounter a blank page and feel stuck, give this idea a shot. At the very least, you'll make progress toward what Ray Bradbury said were (and I paraphrase) "the million bad words that every writer has to get out."

Happy writing!