Overcoming Writers Block: Avoiding the Trap

I may as well just say it. Writers block, Im convinced, doesnt exist. Mostly, I think, authors use writers block as an excuse to explain to themselves, an editor, or a concerned spouse why the book isnt done or the chapter hasnt been turned in.

Writing is talking on paper. Sometimes literally. And you never hear someone say, I cant talk anymore. Ive got talkers block. There just arent words there that can come out.

That said, there are several common traps that new writers especially stumble intoand these traps stop writing progress.

Size Matters

One of the easiest traps is letting the sheer size of book stop writing, as mentioned earlier. The prospect of writing 300 pages is daunting. Especially that first day you sit down. Its easy, especially if youre inexperienced or emotionally worn out, to collapse under the mental burden of all that work.

The mental trick, I suggest, is to not think about those sorts of numbers when youre writing. You need to bite off reasonably sized chunks and focus your energy and anxiety on just todays chunk.

If youre writing in the morning before you have to go to standard job, maybe you should do a thousand words a day. A thousand words is a bit of stretch but still a manageable goal. And if you pace yourself and write, for example, a thousand words a day, at the end of the week, youve maybe got a chapter done. And at the end of four months, your book is done. Thats how it works.

Dont sit down each day with the burden of writing 80,000 words or 300 pages. Sit down to your very manageable goal of writing a few hundred words. It makes all the difference.

Bad Metrics

A second stumbling block relates to the first. While writers, editors and publishers commonly use measurements like words or pages to specify how big a book should be, you dont really build a book with words or pages. Books require more concrete building blocks. And so, especially as youre trying to slog your way through the first chapters of a book (always the hardest for me, quite truthfully) you cant think things like, well, so I now I need to write a thousand words. Instead, you need to sit down and write a book building block or two or three.

Let me provide an example here. When I write some book about computers or technology, in essence, all I do is string together descriptions of facts, instructions for using some tool, and real-life examples. And these are the building blocks I use to create a book.

If Im writing about how to use, for example, a word processors grammar checking tool, I might start by writing a paragraph that explains what the tool does. Then, I might go on by providing descriptions of, say, the six steps you take to use the tool. Finally, I might wrap up the discussion by showing how the tool works on some example text. And when I finish writing up these three building blocks, Ive got my thousand words.

Do you see how thats different from saying that youre going to write a thousand words? A thousand words is the goal. But that goal really doesnt help you grind through your writing. In comparison, saying that youre going to briefly describe the thing, provide some step-by-step instructions and give an example is concrete. That concreteness helps you plod through the writing.

Youre probably not going to write how-to books about technology. But youll find that you too build your book using a pretty small set of specific-to-your-genre building blocks.

Dont fiction writers do this, for example? The novelist describes scenes, records actions, crafts dialog and so on. And what this means againremember that were talking about the myth of writers blockis that if youre writing a mystery novel you dont sit down with only the plan to write your thousand words. Thats too abstract.

You need to sit down planning to write some set of building blocks. Maybe today you describe the hunting lodge as it looks when Petra and Michael discover the old mans body. Maybe tomorrow, you craft the dialog that occurs when the police interrogate Langston about the missing oil paintings.

Especially if youre having trouble achieving your daily word countsand probably even if you arentyou need to use standard building blocks to construct your book. The building blocks let you get the content onto the page.

Small Ideas Mean Big Problems

Let me also revisit something else I often saw when I was a book publisher. Sometimes the real problem a writer is having is trying to turn a little idea into a big book. Yet this problem is misdiagnosed as writers block. Some topics dont merit a book. They may be great topics, but optimal treatment maybe requires ten page or fifty pages. But a book needs to be bigger than that.

I suggest that you can test your idea by writing a couple of example chapters and then making sure theres not redundancy in those chapters and that theres still good content available for two or three more unique chapters. That technique should work. But lets say you didnt know that when you agreed to write a book. Or that my suggested technique, unfortunately, didnt work in your special situation. What can you do?

Youre in a tough spot in this case. You need to expand the scope of your book without screwing up the books original purpose and justification. If I were you and found myself in this position, Id try to figure out how short I was coming up. Like, am I fifty pages short? A hundred pages short? Once I had this information, Id brainstorm to develop a list of related topics that I could use to pad the book or beef it up. Finally, If the book had already been sold, well, Id probably swallow my pride and have an honest conversation with the editor.

If youre only a little bit short, the fix is usually pretty easy. Publishers can make a book seem larger by putting less text on a page or by using thicker paper. If youre writing a nonfiction book, maybe you can throw in an appendix that covers some tangentially related topic or some extended bibliography or a glossary. If youre writing fiction, Im actually not sure what you do. Thats not my area of expertise. Do you add characters? A subplot? I dont know. You better talk with your editor.