Diary of a Book Writer - how to unblock your brain

 

Diary of a Book Writer

The empty page – every writer’s nightmare. But it doesn’t need to be! If the urge to write is akin to a kind of illness, then surely one must put effort into managing said illness? Tactics to fool the brain, trick the muse, short circuit the writer’s block, distract from the horrors?

In twenty four years as a published author I’ve had a few meltdowns, times when nothing seemed to work and I hated the sight of my PC and desk and came up with elaborate distractions to keep me from facing it. But I learned to push past all that. I learned ways of managing the illness, so to speak.

Here are a few ideas that have worked for me.

1.      Test readers and feedback - Send what you’ve written to your test readers. If you don’t have any yet, ask around. Choose people you think can be objective. Be prepared to thicken up your skin! Feedback isn’t personal. You want to improve your writing, don’t you? Of course you don’t have to agree with the feedback provided or act upon it, but it gets the juices flowing again, makes you reconsider just what is it you are trying to express with this piece.

2.      Surf the net for pictures of your protagonists, scenes, settings. If you have a clearer idea of what they look like, what the town looks like, the climate etc. it can help you imagine the scenes and what your characters might say and do.

3.      Map out your plot or structure. Know where you are going with this project. And be prepared to alter it along the way. Stay flexible. (Michael Hauge’s six stage story structure is excellent and I use it for every single fiction book.)

4.      Write down your purpose for this project. What is it exactly meant to do? How? This is similar to the ‘elevator pitch’. If you can’t quite nail it, chat to friends or family to get your head around it.

5.      If you’re having trouble keeping track of characters, their details, their background etc, make up a pro-forma and fill in the details for each character. It can be several pages or just a one page thing. After all, to be rounded protagonists, your characters must have personal views, experiences that shaped them, a past. And you need to know what these aspect are.

6.      If you are writing fiction, you MUST know what your character wants, above all. This can be REALLY DIFFICULT. But persist. It will make your writing better. Then, you plot how to stop them getting it. (insert evil laughter here).

7.      Work on something else. I put away my current manuscript for two years and worked on other projects. When I came back to it, ideas had solidified in my brain and I could look at it with fresh eyes.

So, there are just a few ideas for getting you out of the slump. Keep going! Don’t give up. You will be so proud of yourself when you finish it.

-        -  DM