Homepage
Login
New Post
Profile
I really want to write, but as soon as I sit down and set pen to paper, my mind goes blank.
I can't think of anything to write. Sometimes I stare at my screen for hours; doesn't help.
If I do think of something, it feels stupid, it won't work, it's cliche, etc. Can someone tell me what to do? Am I too anxious, have too high expectations, or trying to think too hard? I simply cannot write.
How do I get over this? Have other people coped with this problem successfully? How?
(22)More posts by @Lengel543
22 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
This "one weird trick" is from the book REST by Alex Soojoung. It may sound odd, but it has increased my writing productivity, and eliminated my writer's block more than anything else I've ever tried.
Write at the time OPPOSITE to your natural rhythms. If you are a night owl, get up an hour early in the morning and write. If you are a morning person, stay up late and write. Your inner critic goes to sleep (or never wakes up) and the writing flows right out of you in kind of a half-dream trance state.
It's really almost like magic how well it works. And contrary to my expectations, it doesn't seem to have reduced the quality of what I write at all. The only downside is then I'm sleepy and grumpy all day. But --the sacrifices you make for your art, right?
Start in the Middle
If you don’t know where to start, don’t bother deciding right now. The first line of a book is critical—but there’s no rule that says you have to start there. The first words you write might end up being the middle of Chapter Three. That’s perfectly fine. And as you work forward in the story, you’ll get an idea about how to work backward. Once your characters develop and the plot grows in directions you didn’t expect, you may see the perfect scene to start things off with.
Start Small and Build Up
You don’t have to set a Chevrolet on fire or have someone murdered on the first page to get the reader’s attention. We’ve all watched a lifetime’s worth of TV and movies that put big and often violent events into the first five minutes as a hook. The assumption is that we have the attention spans of chimpanzees. But hooks are hard to live up to; you can’t stay at that level. Besides, screen culture does violence better than written culture, so leave the big violence to the movies. It’s better to start with a small mystery and build up to a bigger one. The truth about a situation is always big enough to sustain someone’s attention.
Incentivize the Reader
I’m not much of a first sentence type of guy, but I am a first paragraph or two sort of guy, and I think those paragraphs are crucial. Early on, I made the mistake of trying to answer questions about a character’s motivation or critical elements of the plot, knowing those were essential, and thinking the earlier they were out, the more the reader would appreciate it. I learned I was answering the wrong question. In the first couple of paragraphs, the reader isn’t asking questions about the characters or plot. He or she’s asking one simple thing:
“Why should I keep reading?â€
And that’s what I try to answer in the first two paragraphs.
Commit to a Title Up Front
The title you give a story—whether it ends up being your final title or just a placeholder— is your North Star. If you have a placeholder that doesn’t feel right, you have to ask yourself why it doesn’t feel right. And that too can guide you to where you need to be, because it shows you where you shouldn’t go. So trust your title. If you’re stuck, go back to it. Ask yourself why it’s important. By following what’s important to you, you may just end up with something that will be important to other people. They will see that title and make that subterranean connection. What draws you to the novel is inevitably what draws the reader in. Most of the time we don’t get to choose our own names, but we always choose the names of our stories for a reason.
Create a Synopsis
When I first started writing, I always wrote a synopsis. It allowed me to work out story problems and emotional beats early, and served as a road map. And, from a practical standpoint, publishers required them. But the synopsis had the added benefit of helping to get those words on the page. There is something psychologically freeing about knowing that the problem you are tackling has already been at least somewhat addressed in an outline.
Allow Yourself to Write Badly
The best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave me was “Allow yourself to write badly.†Nothing petrifies a writer more than the pursuit of perfection. You have this idea of a story in your head, glowing and golden and wonderful, and as soon as you try to set it down on the page, it turns into something plodding, gray, and feeble. Disappointment and despair come to sit at your side, shaking their heads at your woeful work. You waste valuable writing time beating yourself up about not producing anything special, so eventually you produce nothing at all.
So what I say is: Just write! Get something down. Later you can tweak and polish and fiddle about as much as you like, but before you can make changes, it’s vital that you at least have something to work with.
Make Up the Story as You Go
Don’t feel like you have to have your plot completely worked out before you start. Some of us don’t work like that. In fact, many writers prefer to make up the story as they go along. Plotting is excellent if that’s how you roll, but it’s also perfectly acceptable to sit down and start writing with only a vague idea of what you’re going to write about. With my first novel, Beautiful Malice, I started with the first line, I didn’t go to Alice’s funeral, and took it from there. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had no idea who Alice was or what she’d done to the narrator. I knew nothing. Writing the book was as much a journey of discovery for me as it was for the reader.
Do the Opposite
We all know the piece of writerly advice that tells us we should write the kind of story we love to read. That’s terrific advice. Good luck with that. But if you have bad luck with that, then perhaps you should try this exercise, which I call, right now, for the first time, “Do the Opposite,†in which you write the kind of story that is the exact opposite of the kind of story you hate
Here are a few techniques I've used.
Free Write
For 15 minutes, write constantly. Don't stop to correct spelling, fix mistyped words or pause for ideas. If you can't think of anything keep writing "I can't think of anything." Turn off your monitor, if it helps you to avoid correcting. The concept is to get the mind and fingers flowing. Write whatever pops into your mind. This is like panning for gold. You go through a lot of dirt to find a fleck of gold.
Banish the Editor
We all have an inner editor. This cruel, vicious, hateful person looks at all of our writing as trash. If we spend our time trying to satisfy this editor, we'll never write anything. You need to kick the editor out of the door while you're writing. This takes conscious effort. Write, regardless of how the horrible editor complains that your output stupid, trite or sophomoric. You will come back to it and polish, revise and make it better. Then you will do it again. Very few, if any, can go from a blank canvas to perfect prose. Writing is re-writing.
Keep Notes
You need to have a bank of ideas you can tap into when you write. Carry a small notebook with you, so you can record ideas. It doesn't have to be a whole idea, fragments can be very useful. Be aware of the idle thoughts that flow through your mind. Hear something interesting? Write it down! Have a fragment of a thought that seems interesting? Write it down. Some ideas don't come all at once. Sometime, you'll piece them together. If you don't write it down, you'll NEVER remember it! Heinlein's cat was the inspiration for a novel.
Inspiration is Everywhere
Inspiration is all around you. Look at people while you're standing in line at the grocery store, and try to describe them. Create stories for people you see as you are out and about. Wikipedia has a random article link. If you spend an hour clicking the link and reading every article, you may uncover something interesting or inspiring.
Ask Why
If a book, story or television show inspires you, ask yourself "What was it that piqued my interest?" Often, you'll find a seed of a story.
Someone once told me "Don't shut down ideas, develop them." This means that no matter how crazy or unrealistic an idea might be, it is still an idea and it is still worth a shot. Let's say you're writing a story on a sport and suddenly telekinesis comes into your mind, maybe you can say that instead of controlling something, you can predict what the thing is going to go through or something (just an example). Great ideas must have come from somewhere. Don't be afraid of failure. Thomas Edison once said, "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." After all, without the downs, there are no ups.
As a personal advice, I tend to derive inspiration from my surroundings. If I am writing a book about mystical creatures, I tend to get it from the shapes of trees and describing it in detail or in a view of a child that is afraid. If I am writing about school life, I look at my friends and try to envision their point of view. If I am writing a book about adventure, I try to write in it the difficulties of going through (for example, living in a forest, many mosquitoes and insects and unable to find food).
I wish you all the best!!
What are you trying to sit down to write? A novel? Maybe that seems large and daunting, so focus instead on a short story - not nearly as scary, not as much of a commitment, and maybe that will help loosen your creativity. If you're stuck trying to write a short story, try a poem or an essay instead. It may be that you have expectations about whatever you are trying to write and those expectations are giving you some anxiety and blocking you up. This is a bit more structured than just trying to write something/anything for ten minutes, but it's another way of of untying the knot, hopefully.
Here's a secret not everyone knows about the inner workings of the mind:
It doesn't follow the same rules as the world outside your head.
In the mind, things can't be fixed, turned off, ignored or avoided.
Don't believe me? Here's an experiment: Do not think about a yellow postbox.
Aha! You did. And the more you try not to, the more you'll think about that darned postbox.
Experiment, if you like to. Take one minute of just doing whatever and note every time you think of a yellow postbox, then take another minute and concentrate fully on not thinking of the postbox. Compare the number of times you thought of that postbox in each minute... And, if you managed to think fewer times of the postbox when you concentrated on not to, what did you accomplish instead, what did you think of instead? I spent my minute 100% focusing on a green apple, but I fear that isn't going to get me far in life...
Now for the good news.
What happens inside your head has nothing to do with what happens outside your head until you decide to act on your thoughts and emotions.
Yes, there are a few evolutionarily conditioned emotional responses that are in fact reflexes, but they are way fewer than you think - but that's a different discussion.
So, how do you deal with self-doubt, fear, anxiety, etc?
You don't.
The trick is to live your life and do what you want/like/have to, while still having these things going on in your head.
I'm sure you've been in situations where you had to deal with the outer world while the inner world was in turmoil; mid-terms, asking that special person for a date, being in a relationship, taking care of children, etc.
You do this by accepting that things in your head are going to happen and that you can't control them (Yellow Postbox!), that you do not have to have 100% control of the mind in order to make things happen outside of it.
The next step is to have a plan, like an exercise or a new habit. I've seen several good examples of that among the other answers to this question.
An instant cure to the blank page...open the newspaper/news site and look for small quirky stories, e.g. "man arrested on unicycle outside Parliament." No pressure, take that headline and just create your own story of how it might have happened. Another favourite one is to pick a published novel/story and re-invent the beginning. hope these help.
One approach, which seemed to work for me, is just to write something. It doesn't matter what - write a review or assessment of a TV programme, And then rewrite it to make it better. If you want, send it to a newspaper, which might give you a good focus, but the purpose is not to have something marketable, just to go through the process of writing something significant - i.e. longer than an answer on SE.
If you can get something written, taking the time to get it right, it might give you the inspiration to continue to write more and more, as well as the practicalities, and working on getting them right.
My writing was a PhD thesis, but it showed me that i could write and re-write over a period of time, and produce something worthwhile (sort of - I have still to get it completed!). Once you are over the challenge of being able to write something significant, you will find it easier.
You could try a more structured approach than just sitting down and writing something. When I run into this issue, I start branching out my ideas using a snowflake model. You don't have to follow any strict guidelines, just jot down some simple ideas and keep branching off. Sooner than later ideas will pour in faster than you can type. When they stop, go back to your model.
You just need to shut off the inner critic, and start writing.
There are two main approaches: pantsing, and plotting.
As I answered in the question linked above, pantsing works for very few people. Plotting is a better approach, for me at least.
Write down a rough, one page summary of what you want the book to be, create a few characters, create 30-40 scenes which move the story forward, and start writing.
As you write, you don't have to stick to the plan. If you dont like a character, just ignore them and continue writing, but don't go back to edit your novel. If you don't like the plot, again change it on the fly, and pretend that's what you wrote. You can always fix any plot holes in editing.
The dilemma you are stuck in happens to everyone, and the only way out is to type out 50-60,000 words, without criticising yourself or trying to edit. There is no easy way, you just have to slog through the process.
A way to make this easy is to write what you love. This may or may not be what you like reading, or the type of writer you want to be. For a long time I wanted to be a serious writer, the type that wins awards & stuff. But every time I tried to write such books, my muse revolted, and like you I ended up writing nothing.
Accepting that I have my own style, and it may never win me the Pulitzer award was one of the biggest challenges for me, harder than how to create a plot/character, things all the blog writers want to talk about.
I will end with a quote from Scott Berkun:
This means that when people can’t start they’re imagining the precision of the end, all polished and brilliant, a vision that makes the ugly clumsy junkyard that all beginnings are, impossible to accept. Good voice, tone, rhythm, ideas and grammar are essential to good writing, but they’re never introduced all at once.
and
Have you ever been blocked while playing Frisbee? Eating doughnuts? Dancing naked in your living room? Those are joyful things and there’s nothing at stake: if you fail, who cares? Nobody. If there are no rules, and no judgment, psychological blocks are impossible. And remember writers like making names and overthinking things: there is no term for architect-block, painter-block, juggler-block or composer-block. Every creative pursuit faces similar pressures, but they don’t obsess about it the way writers seem to do.
Artists Way, Julia Cameron: three pages a day, longhand, first thing in the morning.
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott: Start with a 1" picture frame and describe what you see. (Also, shitty first drafts.)
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Start with the brick in the corner of the building. Describe it.
They're all saying the same thing. On Writing, Stephen King. Art & Fear, Bayles & Orland.
Do it, and do it again, and again, and again, and again. I've been at it since 1973. Disconnect "having a pen in your hand and paper on your desk" from "having anything to say." Get the pen moving, and when it's ready, you'll start having something to say.
First of all; Craig had some really good advice in his post! Thank you Craig for these, I must try out the association tree. Anyway, I thought I'd share a tip of mine about how I practice my flow of words.
When I feel the urge to write I have set up a journal which I can reach over the internet. I write what ever comes in my mind and I have one and only one rule; I am not allowed to go back and change or delete anything I've written. This simple rule has changed my way of writing a great deal to be honest.
Before I used this rule for my journal I tried numerous times to write down ideas and short stories but I always got caught up in the work of re-writing and re-touching before I was done. This of course led to that I did not finish of anything I wrote which made me think I could never write.
By using the rule of no re-write in my journal I have eradicated the pressure of writing anything "wrong" since all I write is as it is. My only way of change it is to continue to write and by doing so change the context.
So my advice to you on how to start to write is simply, just write and don't look back while your doing it. Let your thoughts and feelings flow and then read what you've written afterwards. By doing this the writing itself will become more and more natural for you and you will have an easier task of writing an actual story in a more relaxed way.
The key point with writing is that writing should be a habit.
I would go so far as to say that what you write (initially) is probably not as important as the fact that you write.
Many authors have confessed to sometimes sitting down and just writing "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and other inane phrases over and over again.
Why? Because this is what helps to release your subconscious, which is where you want to be.
It is exceptionally rare that you'll ever sit down and be able to write something "read-worthy" immediately. Most writers develop and incubate ideas over long periods of time.
I would therefore say that the right place to start is to:
Get a small journal you can take with you everywhere. Doesn't have to be fancy or expensive, just something good, portable, and sturdy.
Get into the habit of jotting down observations: things you see, read, hear - everything.
Get into the habit of cutting out clippings from newspapers that you like, or photographs that trigger ideas, and then writing down what you liked about them, or how you may use them.
Get into the habit of using your journal like a diary as well. Write down things that you did that day, the things that struck you as interesting.
Get into the habit of writing about writing, and about what you've read.
Get into the habit of writing about your own memories and thoughts: things you remember happening to you, to friends and family.
Start looking at and listening to people, and think of them in terms of possible characters: their flaws and contradictions; their habits; their appearances. Make small character sketches.
Try writing early in the morning just when you wake up and before you've done anything. Just get up and write. It doesn't matter what it is, just follow your stream of consciousness.
Also look at using word association. If you come up with an idea like "I want to write a story about a ghost", then write down the word ghost. Start writing words that pop in your head with relation to that, and create a word tree with branches. If something you write down triggers an idea, write a branch from that word. (Believe me, this does work!)
You'll notice the key element through all this is: write.
Soon, you'll start to come up with ideas of what to do with what you've written, and you'll write some more ... and that's where the magic is.
Write.
I guess it depends on how the blank page is overwhelming you. If you can't think of anything at all to write, I do have a couple ideas. These are really more ideas to just start running with something so you can get some writing done, sort of as a way to get the gears unstuck.
Go to your bookshelf, pick up a book, flip to a random page and pick a random line of dialog. Copy that dialog down into your story, and start writing off of that.
Take a story line from a show you like and use it to write a story in a different setting. Don't write it as fanfic, just lift the start of the plot, and change it as needed.
Ask a friend for three to five random words, the write a paragraph around them, and go on from there.
To reiterate, these are ways to get you writing anything to break loose the mental crud. If you can get a good story out of these so much the better (I've gotten at least one great sci-fi story out of this process). Once you get writing on SOMETHING, writing something else will become easier.
I agree with most of the other posts on this topic, but I have a little bit to add:
I think the answer will be different depending on whether you're an established, experienced writer having a dry spell, or if you're an aspiring writer who can't get started.
If you're a fairly experienced writer: I find it helpful to read back over my old books. I either get caught up in the story and build my confidence and enthusiasm that way, or I find a million things I could have done better, and THAT inspires me to go on and write something new so I have a chance to fix the mistakes I made the last time. I also like to have a target publisher in mind for each book; they might not be the people I end up submitting the story to, but I can keep them in mind while writing, as inspiration. "I wonder what the cover will look like? Wouldn't it be cool to have a book for sale from the same publisher as author X?" etc.
If you're a new writer: I agree with Nick Bedford - maybe you like the IDEA of writing, but the actual writing ITSELF isn't that much fun. If that's the case, I'd ask yourself why you want to write. If you're looking for fame and fortune, I'd try something else - this isn't an easy field to break into, and it's even harder to rise to the top. And I'll bet most of the people sitting on top of the writing world didn't have a whole lot of trouble finding things to start writing about. On the other hand, if you want to write because you think you have something to say, or because you have a passion for it, and just HAVE to do it - great, just try to remember that passion when you sit down to write!
A more concrete suggestion - try to get something written and get some feedback on it, as much and as soon as possible. Yes, it's a way to improve your work, but more importantly, it feels GREAT. Writing a novel is a ridiculously long slog with no feedback, no rewards, and no guarantees. It's VERY hard for a first-time writer to stay motivated through all that. Whatever you're writing, make sure you find ways to share it early and often, to keep yourself enthusiastic about the work.
Good luck.
I think there's another question (which I ask myself all the time).
Does the romantic notion of writing a long winded novel allure you only to find you somehow can't invest your time in such a huge undertaking, possibly resulting in writer's block and procrastination?
I have done some writing, and I love it. I even have a huge story which I think has a lot of potential, but in months and months I have only achieved two ten page chapters. I haven't even touched it for a long time.
I think, for myself, the other activities I'm involved in are much more of a priority, and that writing is more of a pastime, even if it doesn't seem so at the time. In fact, the most time I spent working on it was while I was bored at work.
I'm not trying to stop you from writing, but this is what I've found in my own experience. Maybe it might help.
You already turned the table around by writing about your writer's block. Continue.
My advice is don't write just to write. Write when you have something to say. Then you won't have this problem.
You have two issues: writing, and what to write.
Put aside the "what" for a second.
Go get a timer. Set it for ten minutes. Press start. Start writing. It doesn't matter what you write. You can type the alphabet, song lyrics, Schoolhouse Rock, stream of consciousness, what you had for dinner last night, it doesn't matter. Don't edit, don't fix typos, don't save, don't stop. You are even allowed to write "I have no idea what to say next so I am just typing until something occurs to me." Just GO until the timer dings.
There. Now you don't have writer's block. You've just proved to yourself that you can still write.
oldrobots has some excellent suggestions on getting you unstuck on the "what."
I would also add as a general suggestion that you keep a journal (I love the black-and-white marbled composition books) and jot stuff down as it occurs to you. Descriptions, characters, lists of things (Things I like, things I hate, superpowers I would never want, why the color orange annoys me, which items I have had at my favorite restaurant), just write it down. In one of your stuck moments, going back over your journal can sometimes give you a spark.
Turn off that censor. Have a drink or two. You have to come to terms with the fact that you will "write shitty first drafts", as Anne Lamott says in the writing/life guide I would highly, highly recommend: Bird by Bird. It helped me and many others get over fears like you're having right now.
If you are stuck in the middle of a novel, take a look at where you are at and where you're going. Deduce any of the pivotal scenes that need to happen between now and then, and work your way quickly toward one of those.
If you're coming up with a total blank at the very beginning of a short story or novel, then you need a catalyst in the first place. Look at some newspaper headings, read a few books, thoroughly examine pivotal, dramatic moments in your life. Start writing with a striking line of dialogue and go from there. Find a moment in time where something dramatic is happening between two characters. You don't have to know exactly what you're writing when you sit down. Just explore. Start writing something. Even if what you end up writing is going straight to the garbage, most often you'll find a glimmer of something buried in that garbage. So then you start over again, this time with the glimmer in mind.
Just as a rule, you can't rely on other people to tell you what to write.
If you can't think of a story idea, you either need to step away from writing or give up completely. There are story ideas everywhere. At any given time a fiction writer generally has a few WIPs that they're working on, and if not ones they've started, they've usually got a list of story ideas they'd like to work on in the future.
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © selfpublishingguru.com2024 All Rights reserved.