It’s late evening. I’m barely able to keep my eyes open having been up since 6am. I’m staring at my blank blog screen without a clue what to write. I did a lot of things today, but I don’t know if any of it is interesting for anyone to read about. So I’ll write about it anyway, just on the off-chance.
The day started with a five kilometre jog on my treadmill (tried to beat my personal best for the distance, and did so by 20 seconds). Yawn. That was followed by half an hour studying some strange foreign language that I’ve been struggling to get to grips with for a few weeks now. Brazilian Portuguese, I think it’s called. I can say ‘the cat is in the hat’ and a few other useful phrases already. Boring. I went to Blockbuster to return a couple of DVDs, took ‘er indoors to a shop that sells synthetic flowers, then had meetings with a bank manager and an accountant. Anyone still awake?
The problem is that I didn’t get down to working on the novel until it was dark. I managed to edit about 3,000 words, but I have no energy in reserve for writing an entertaining blog about today’s edits and new bits. My quill is dry. The proud tower of my muse lies forlorn. Writer’s block has truly hit me this evening.
Or has it? I haven’t actually engaged my brain very much to produce the paragraphs above (yes, I know it shows, but bear with me while I attempt to make some kind of tenuous point). And that’s the thing about writer’s block. The only way past it is simply to write. Write about why you feel you can’t write. Write about your frustration at feeling uninspired. Write about why it’s so unfair that everyone else seems so easily to be able to get their creative juices flowing freely while the movement of your juices is more akin to that of a glacier.
Write about what you had for breakfast. Write about you wished you’d had for breakfast if you hadn’t run out of eggs and sausages. Write about how you’ll be glad you didn’t have a fry-up today when you next step on those bathroom scales. Before you know it, you’ve been writing hundreds of words and the idea that you’re suffering from writer’s block suddenly seems ridiculous.
That’s 400 words so far. Turns out I wasn’t suffering from writer’s block after all.
PS The injured pigeon didn’t survive the night. I’ll give it a decent burial tomorrow.
I find it very hard to write if I've started doing other things in the day - I do my best work first thing in the morning, when my mind is clear. But you're right, it's good just to write past it.
ReplyDeleteIf the block persists, I've found it helpful to deliberately limit my writing time. Only write for half an hour a day, no matter what. Half an hour is easy, much less daunting than a whole day staring at a blank page, and the words come out fast because I know I've only got half an hour to write. After a few days I want to write more and more, and it's easy to go back up to my normal time. It's a trick suggested in a great book I read years ago, "Break Writer's Block Now!" by Jerry Mundis.
Good luck with the editing. I hate editing, so am interested to see you blogging about it!