Breaking blocks

Graphic by Peg Ihinger

Writer’s Block.

There are a ton of different definitions of it, ranging from the exceedingly broad (“Any time you want to write but can’t for whatever reason” which technically includes sitting in the dentist’s chair or being at the store buying groceries) to the humorous (“Writer’s block is when your imaginary friends stop talking to you”) to extremely specific psychological treatises (even though “writer’s block” isn’t an actual mental health diagnosis).

Because there are so many definitions of writer’s block, there are plenty of people who claim it doesn’t exist, because hey, you can still write a grocery list. But there’s a big difference between staring at a blank page or screen for ten minutes and then deciding that it’s a nice day to go to the beach, and banging your brain against what seems to be a gigantic brick wall with extra metal plating and internal steel reinforcing rods for days or weeks. Yelling at people that their experience is invalid doesn’t help.

In my personal lexicon, a profound disinclination to write is not writer’s block. Not wanting to write, but knowing that it’s the only way I’ll make progress, is not the same as being unable to write. Similarly, for me, “I don’t know what happens next” is not writer’s block, it’s a lack of story development. Sitting down and doing the development is part of my writing process, and therefore the fact that I just spent two weeks figuring out how the city guards work while not writing so much as a sentence of the actual story…is still writing. Therefore, it’s still not writer’s block.

I have several scenes, and even a couple of entire chapters, that have been sitting on my hard drive for a couple of decades now. They aren’t blocked projects; they’re things that I’ve never gotten around to developing fully. I never committed to writing them. I have faith that eventually, my backbrain will throw out the missing link and the project will take off. Meanwhile, I’m waiting, not blocked.

Getting stuck in the middle of a story I’m committed to writing is another matter. And as with most writing issues, the key step is diagnosis.

Based on my experience and observations, the most common reasons for getting seriously stuck, a.k.a. writer’s block, include:

Perfectionism. The Internal Editor won’t allow any progress until everything so far is perfect. Which it never is.

Fear and self-doubt. The writer has a paralyzing fear that their work is too obvious, too obscure, too pedantic, too boring, too…bad. Or just not good enough.

Exhaustion. The writer’s non-writing life has blown up in some way, and when they get home from the office, the doctor’s appointments, the job/apartment search, or whatever, they have no physical energy left, let alone mental energy.

Stress. This can be internal pressure or perfectionism, or external pressure like worrying about rent money or caring for an infant or just being over-committed.

Not having fun. Writing has become a boring, tedious, endless chore.

Lack of direction. The writer has no idea what happens next, no idea how to figure out what happens next, and is too much of a planner to just wing it.

The hardest blocks to deal with, in my experience, are perfectionism, fear, and doubt. Those aren’t easy to change. It can help if you have friends (or internet strangers) telling you “This is good. I want to read the rest. Finish this,” but even that doesn’t always work. When someone doubts themself, it’s easy to discount positive feedback and encouragement.

The only thing I know for those three is to take a step in the dark. Yes, you may fall down an infinite pit or be eaten by a grue, but if you don’t move, you will eventually starve to death. Turn off the part of your brain that notices flaws and imperfections and that worries about it not being good enough. Tell it that it’s too dark to look for mistakes, that it that it will get a chance later, and then enforce that boundary the way good parents enforce bedtime or no-you-don’t-get-three-desserts for a cranky three-year-old.

Do not give in to the three-year-old after a paragraph, a page, or a chapter, no matter how that scared, perfectionist doubter whines. You have official permission to write a perfectly terrible draft, whether it’s a zeroth or a twenty-first draft. Make notes or highlight bits that you think you want to fix, if you must, but don’t stop moving forward to fix them. The point is to get through the dark and out the other side before the grues show up.

If exhaustion or stress over things-that-aren’t-writing is the problem, there are two diametrically opposite possible approaches. The first is to take the time you normally would spend writing to decompress, take a long hot bath, sit in the park and stare blankly at trees, or grab that extra hour of sleep you so desperately need. In other words, deal with the exhaustion and stress, instead of adding to it by forcing yourself to write.

The second option is to use writing as a coping mechanism. This can be escaping into your writing world where there are no outside stresses, or it can mean writing a wish-fulfillment piece where a character in a suspiciously similar situation blows up all the sources of stress in a satisfying explosion. Or it can mean swapping from fiction to journaling or letter writing. Or doing math problems. (Not my first choice, but one of my college friends swore by it for stress relief because it required total concentration on something that wasn’t whatever was stressing him out.)

Not having fun…well, what would make it more fun? Surprise ninjas? Pirates? A new character who is just exactly like your favorite aunt? Dolphins? People bursting out in poetry in the middle of a court case? Having the hero suddenly stab that extremely annoying character you’d planned to keep around for the next book? Try it and see what happens.

Finally, lack of direction usually means a need for plot-noodling, either on one’s own or with a partner. Complaining about one’s work to one’s writing group or beta readers is frequently surprisingly effective. Explaining your problem clearly to a bunch of people who haven’t read your story tends to force one to organize one’s thoughts just enough for new ideas to slip in.