Sometimes Writing Is Hard

Sometimes writing is easy, when you feel deeply impassioned about a subject and know just how to say it. The words flow.  I think it was Truman Capote who said something like:  “I’ve always been able to throw words up in the air and have them come down in the right order.” Sometimes we can do that, too.

When you’ve emptied the passion bucket, maybe all you have to do is tweak a sentence or two, choose a better word here and there, correct a typo.  Then you go back over your manuscript and wonder where all those earth-shaking thoughts and sentences came from, and you sit back and bask in the glow of a job well done.

It doesn’t always work that way

Sometimes writing is hard work, when you feel as though you have nothing more to say, or when the right words – or even word – won’t come to mind. The cup is empty. The well has gone dry.

You sit there, staring at that blank screen or unfinished sentence, wondering if your word file clerk went on vacation.

What to do

Have another cup of coffee. Take a walk. Call your best friend and chat a minute.  Try again tomorrow.

Sometimes that works.

A better idea

1. Leave that blocked project. Start a whole new one. Make some notes on a new idea. I’ve read about authors who have a couple or three different writing projects going on at the same time. When one idea fades, they work on one of the others. This often works well for us nonfiction writers; we may have an interview, do research on another piece, and be putting the words in the computer for a third article, all on the same day.
2. Let the muse work. I think it was Phyllis Whitney who said she lies on the couch and visualizes the scene she is trying to write. She doesn’t write anything. She just watches the scene in her mind, expecting to find the words to describe it later.
3. Have the beginning down, but don’t know where to go next? I wrote a book once where I had the first several chapters done – and the last several chapters done. I thought I had a good beginning and I knew where I was going to end up, but I was unable to connect the beginning with the end!

I signed up for an individual workshop with a creative writing professor at the local university and told him I wanted him to make me see this through. I met with him once a week with what I had written. I had to take something new each week, no excuses. I rewrote that middle section over three times, a new effort each week for three weeks, each one an entirely different approach – and finally found the right one! He gave me an A.  Not the most conventional way to finish a book, but it worked.  Maybe your writer friends or group can do this for you and push you back into production. Share with them.

4. Sometimes ideas come in the middle of a wakeful night. Do you have your pad of notepaper at the head of your bed and one of those pens with the light in it so you can write in the dark? As they say, sleep on it. Something may happen.
5. Maybe the idea you’re working on isn’t viable after all. Many a manuscript has ended all crumpled up in the wastebasket or the computer trash basket. You’ve got other ideas. Work on one of them. Start a whole new project. Begin again.

Something — eventually — will start your juices flowing again. Don’t give up.

What do you do?

If you have a way to break the word-jam, share it with our readers in the comment section. Let’s add a whole string of writer’s block ideas. Maybe one of them will work for you the next time you’re stuck.