Category Archives: The writing life

The Misery Problem

Imagine this: you’re a successful author with a long-running book series. Suddenly the creative well runs dry and your muse wants to end the series and write different stories, with different characters. However, your fans are begging for the series to continue.

That’s the problem faced by author Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s novel Misery (1987), so let’s call it the Misery Problem. I mentioned this in a previous blogpost and promised I’d get back to it.

What if the Misery Problem happened to you, in real life? Assuming you didn’t become the victim of an obsessed reader fan who’s also a psychotic nurse, what would you do?

Before I discuss some of your options, I must say this is a problem I’d love to have! After considering it, I’ve come up with the following options:

  • Follow Your Muse. End that series that’s become an albatross around your neck. Terminate it by killing off one or more of the beloved characters. You’re tired of those books and you need to move on to other things. Let the fans complain all they want. They’ll adjust.
  • Throw Your Fans a Bone. If you really don’t want to disappoint your readers, and if you can stand to write some more stories in the series, but along a different vein, consider:
    • A Prequel. Explore what happened before the events of your series.
    • An Origin Story. This is a special kind of prequel that relates the story of how your series character(s) got started.
    • A Spinoff. Pick an engaging secondary character from your series and write stories about that character. This might work well if you tried to end your series with the death of a main character.
    • A Crossover. Consider this if you’ve started a second, unrelated series set in the same time period as the first. In a crossover, characters from the two series meet and interact.
  • Please Your Fans. You hate to disappoint your readers, and perhaps you can bring yourself to continue the series. However, you’ve killed off a beloved main character. What to do?
    • If you write fantasy, you could conjure up some magical explanation for bringing that character back to life.
    • If you write scifi, you’ll need a pseudo-scientific explanation for bringing the character back to life.
    • Re-read the scenes where you killed the character off. Is there some wiggle room? Did the character really die, or is survival possible somehow?

Can you come up with other solutions to the Misery Problem? We can only hope it’s a conundrum to be faced someday by you and by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 10, 2021Permalink

7 Things to Know Before You Retire to Write Full Time

It’s tough to write part time while still working at your day job. I know. I did it for several decades, all the while dreaming of how prolific I’d be and how much money I’d make when I retired.

Well, I’ve been retired for nearly three years. How’s it going so far?

In truth, things aren’t as good as I’d hoped, nor as bad as I feared. Still, I’ve learned some lessons.

If you’re still laboring in a day job, looking forward to retirement when you’ll write all day and rake in those large-advance contracts, perhaps you’ll benefit from my seven take-aways:

  1. Writing time will increase, but maybe not to full time. There will still be other things to do, the non-writing parts of life. Those won’t stop.
  2. There will still be reasons not to write. If you’ve been good at making excuses for avoiding things you should do, you’ll still do that in retirement. You might become better at it.
  3. Becoming rich may stay a dream. For most of you, writing will not provide much supplement to your retirement income.
  4. It may be harder to discipline your time. While you’re working, clocks rule your life and you squeeze writing into the available hours. When you retire, you’ll have more time, but it’s easier to waste it.
  5. You may have to adjust to life without a boss. During your working years, you’ve gotten used to having a supervisor tell you what to do. Can you manage your own time without a boss?
  6. Others might have a say. Perhaps your home companion’s vision of your retirement doesn’t include you sitting alone and typing for hours on end. Best to settle those issues before retirement day.
  7. You might get bored with writing. That hasn’t happened to me, but it could. Do you have a Plan B if you tire of the writing biz?

I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I’m enjoying my retirement and I’m writing more than I used to. It’s been great. Maybe, for you, retirement will provide the time you need to achieve the writing success you’ve dreamed of. I hope so. But it’s good to have realistic expectations.

Writing always starts with dreaming. But at some point, you’ve got to put words together using whatever time you have. If you still have a day job, write when you can. Don’t waste valuable time fantasizing about retirement, like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 15, 2020Permalink

8 Distractoxins and Their Antidotes

Distractions are like poison to writers, interrupting word flow and reducing productivity. They come in various forms, so let’s call them ‘Distractoxins.’ Are there any cures?

First, I must give credit to author Dan Blank, who inspired this post with his hilarious list of writer distraction. Well worth reading.

I came up with my own list of distractoxins likely to interrupt a writer’s work. For each one I’ve got an antidote. You may experience distractions that aren’t on my list, and I’d love to hear about yours. Also, my antidotes aren’t guaranteed for everyone, so please let me know if you have different cures that work for you.

  1. Decorations. By this I mean other items in your writing room. They include bookshelves, clocks, furniture, lamps, knickknacks, wall pictures, etc. While considering your next sentence, you may fix your eyes on any of these items and your thoughts may drift away from the writing task at hand.

Antidote: Minimize the number of these items in your writing room. Avoid bringing new items in, since your eye will be attracted to any change.

  1. Fatigue. This needs no explanation. It happens.

Antidote: Stand up, walk around, swing your arms. You could try coffee, tea, or an energy drink but don’t overdo those.

  1. Internet. This includes social media, videos, email, and all the other attractions of our marvelous internet. Everything there seems so urgent and attention-grabbing, as if designed to distract us.

Antidote: Find a method of writing that limits your contact with the internet. This can include writing with ink on paper or using a typewriter, single-function word processor (like AlphaSmart or FreeWrite), or one of the various distraction-minimizing apps. The latter include Calmly Writer, FocusWriter, Ommwriter, Q10, WriteMonkey, and WriteRoom.

  1. People. There may be other people in your house, or neighbors, and it seems their mission in life is to interrupt you.

Antidote: There may be little you can do about this, since you may care about these people almost as much as you care about your writing. Still, you can close the door, hang a do-not-disturb sign, and hope for the best.

  1. Phone. The trouble is, you never know in advance if a call is important or not, but the ringing makes it seem urgent.

Antidote: Yes, you can turn off a phone, and you might have to resort to that. If you don’t want to go that far, then let it ring. Important people leave messages.

  1. Television. I like to joke that the inventors of TV in the 1920s had nothing to watch; now we have hundreds of channels, yet we suffer from the same problem they did. Not really true—there’s plenty to watch, and your friends and coworkers expect you to talk about favorite shows tomorrow.

Antidote: Every remote has an ‘off’ button. There’s no such thing as must-see-TV.

  1. To-Do Lists. There’s more to your life than writing, with many tasks to be done. While writing, thoughts of those undone tasks can nag you.

Antidote: This is a time management problem. Schedule time for writing, and for life’s other tasks. Work on higher priority things first, but leave some time for things you enjoy, like writing.

  1. Windows. Here I’m talking about actual windows, through which you can see the alluring outside world.

Antidote: Curtains or blinds.

The best antidote for any of these distractoxins is to note the signs of onset. You can feel yourself getting sidelined. You can realize it’s a choice you make, not an inevitable happening. Remember: you control your attention. Learn to recognize the moment a distractoxin takes over and, in that instant, make a conscious effort to recall why your writing task was important and imagine how good you’ll feel when you’re done.

Ooh. Excuse me. Shiny object over there. Wait…no…must focus on writing…must apply antidote…must save—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 1, 2020Permalink

You Don’t Need a Mission Statement

Many organizations have mission statements. Some people have their own personal mission statement. A few writers have an ‘author mission statement.’ I don’t think you need one, and I’ll explain why.

According to most definitions of mission statements, their purpose is to serve as a goal or agenda, to communicate the organization’s (or person’s) purpose to all stakeholders, and to create a sense of unity and identity.

To those purposes, I would add this: a mission statement can maintain focus and motivation.

Several authors have their own mission statement. Robert J. Sawyer’s is “to combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic.” Dr. Randy Ingermanson’s is “to write excellent novels and non-fiction; to market my work like a mad genius; and to teach other writers to do the same.” Leanne Sowul’s is rather long, but begins this way: “My mission is to write fiction that tells stories from multiple perspectives about a significant moment in time.” Joanne Phillips’ is also long, and starts as follows: “I write stories to entertain and offer a temporary escape into another life.”

If all these authors have mission statements, and many have explained their reasons for having one, why am I suggesting you don’t need one? Who am I to go against the accumulated genius of more successful writers?

I’m not disparaging anyone’s mission statement. If other writers receive some benefit from theirs, more power to them. If you’re determined to come up with one for yourself, I’m not here to talk you out of it.

Also, I’m not against mission statements in general. They’re great for organizations. Even personal mission statements, of the sort advocated by Stephen R. Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, have significant value.

I’m just suggesting, before you invest the time to craft an author mission statement, you might ask yourself why you’re doing it. Do you believe you’ll write better after you have one? Do you occasionally forget why you’re writing and need a reminder? Do you really need the prodding of words on a brass plaque above your desk?

It’s not like you’re leading a team where members will stray off on tangents or act counter to the goal. For your fiction writing endeavors, it’s just you.

Think of other significant roles you have in life, possibly spouse, parent, employee, etc. Do you have written mission statements for any of those individual roles? If not, what makes your writer role different?

Most likely you started your hobby because an inner voice kept screaming “Write!” during your waking hours, and it’s never let up. Do you need more prompting than that?

Remember, time spent honing your mission statement is time not spent writing fiction.

Obviously, you’re free to do your own thing, in your own way. No matter your reason, you might want a written author mission statement, and might glean some benefit from having one.

Please leave a comment if you disagree with me. I’m especially interested in why you crafted your author mission statement, and how you think it has helped you.

For now, writing without any mission statement whatsoever, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 11, 2020Permalink

10 Traits Writers Need Most

What traits do you need to become a successful fiction writer? Of those, which are most important?

Author Anne R. Allen wrote a blogpost some years ago that inspired this line of thinking for me. She had encountered people who thought talent was necessary, and sufficient. They’d send her their written excerpts and ask, “Do you think I’ve got the talent?”

Anne Allen argued, persuasively, that natural talent might aim you in your life’s direction, but is far less important than skill, or several other traits she cited.

I decided to carry the argument in a different direction. Given the traits she mentioned, could I come up with an ordered list from most important to least important?

Using a technique called pair-wise comparison, I used a matrix to compare each trait against each of the others and added up the scores.

First, let’s define each one in alphabetical order:

  • Creativity, or Imagination. This wasn’t on Anne R. Allen’s list, but I consider it important. Basically, it’s the ability to come up with new ideas, to invent characters, plots, scene descriptions, etc.
  • Drive. This is the inner motivation or impulse to write. It’s that determination, that self-discipline, that pushes you to create fictional worlds.
Gratitude symbol
  • Gratitude. By this, Anne meant the willingness to accept help in the form of negative criticism, particularly comments on your manuscript from beta readers and editors. I would have called it Toughness, or Thick Skin, but we’ll keep with Anne’s term.
  • Learning. This is the willingness to acquire new writing skills by educating yourself. There are numerous methods, including studying the classics, taking classes, participating in critique groups, and reading books about writing. Choose the method that works for you.
  • Marketing. This trait measures how well you understand what your readership wants and how well you expose potential readers to your writing. These days, you have to know the market and be willing to advertise yourself.
  • Observation. Anne called this trait “Listening Skills,” but I sought a one-word description. Writers must watch and listen to people, how they behave, what they say, what facial expressions and gestures they use, what verbal expressions and dialect they employ, etc. Such knowledge will make your characters seem more realistic.
  • Passion. This describes your love of writing. Although related to Drive, this is more about the pleasure you derive from the act of writing itself.
Tabono Symbol
  • Persistence. It’s a measure of your willingness and ability to overcome setbacks, to solve problems and move forward, to rise after falling.
  • Skill. This trait describes the quality of your writing. Anne had much to say about skill, but didn’t include it specifically in her list of traits. She defined ‘talent’ as inborn skill, but believed few people had talent, but most could develop skill. Her post suggested that ‘skill’ was an umbrella term that included all the other traits. I believe skill is independent of all of them, and merely addresses how well you write.
  • Solitude. Anne called this ‘The Ability to be Alone’ and made it clear that writing is not just for introverts. It’s just that extroverts must leave their comfort zone for a while, since writing is an individual effort.

Obviously, there are inter-relationships and overlaps among these traits. Still, they’re distinct enough that I was able to rate each one in importance against all the others. Below is my subjective list from most important to least:

  1. Creativity
  2. Drive
  3. Passion
  4. Observation
  5. Learning
  6. Skill
  7. Persistence
  8. Gratitude
  9. Marketing
  10. Solitude

As a general pattern, you can see my most important ones are traits that get you started, and the least important (with the exception of Solitude) are traits you develop as a result of having written and submitted your work.

That list may not seem right to you, but it works for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 2, 2020Permalink

Writing—Routine, Habit, or Ritual?

As a writer, you’re trying to form a daily routine of writing well. Or is that a good habit of writing well? Or a ritual? Let’s clear this up.

According to neuroscience expert Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs, all three are periodically repeating actions, but there are differences. I’m going to put my own spin on the ideas Ms. Le Cunff presented in her article.

Routine. This type of action is conscious and deliberate. A routine requires thought and willpower to do. If a strong intent isn’t there each time, you’ll just stop doing the routine, or you’ll delay it until the last minute.

Examples of routines include exercising, cleaning your room, and paying taxes.

Habit. This is an action prompted by an automatic urge, usually triggered by some cue. The closer your mind connects the action to the cue, the more fixed the habit becomes. Habits can be good or bad, and human nature makes it easy to slip into bad ones and easy to slip out of good ones.

Examples of habits include getting up with an alarm clock, brushing teeth after eating, and checking email first after turning on your computer.

Ritual. An action intended to better yourself, not just maintain your existence. It gives you purpose and fulfillment. Your focus is on enjoying the task, not just getting through it.

Examples of rituals include meditation, learning a new language, and practicing a musical instrument.

If you intend to be a good writer, which of the three are you aiming for? To answer that, you need to understand one more concept first—the Habit Loop.

I believe all habits start off as routines. For example, the first time you brushed your teeth, you had to think through the process. It was a routine, requiring intent and concentration. Later, after it became a habit, you performed it automatically, usually right after eating.

How do routines become habits? By using the Habit Loop.

The idea here is to use a cue of some kind to trigger the task, and then reward yourself for completing it. By shortening the time of the cycle, particularly the cue-routine gap and the routine-reward gap, you help ingrain the routine as a habit. That’s what the inward-pointing arrows signify.

How does all this apply to writing? For simplicity, let’s separate writing into three tasks:

  1. Initiation—sitting down to write. I recommend making this a daily habit. Use the Habit Loop to ingrain it, if necessary. For beginning writers, Initiation is the most important task. After all, the other two can’t take place if you don’t plunk yourself down in the chair to write first.
  • Conceptualization—choosing a genre, constructing a plot, fleshing out characters. I think of this as a ritual, in the sense of being done for the sheer joy of writing. This requires considerable conscious thought and creativity, and should not be considered a chore. Don’t get into a habit rut by writing stories with the same theme, similar characters, common settings, etc. Keep things fresh.
  • Mechanics—stringing sentences together, choosing words, etc. Some days, this may seem like a ritual, an enjoyable task done for its own sake. Other days, it may seem like a routine, a task requiring thought but one you look forward to completing. Perhaps for truly experienced authors, this becomes more automatic, like a habit.

Is writing a routine, habit, or ritual? Apparently, it is all three. It’s a routine/habit/ritual much loved by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 31, 2020Permalink

Why You Bound Out of Bed

The reason you scramble out of bed each day, wide-eyed and raring to go, is simple. You’ve got things to do. More specifically, you have goals to achieve. As Snuffy Smith always said, “time’s a’wastin’!”

What’s that? You don’t bound out of bed? You (shudder) don’t have any goals?

Hoo boy. We’ve got to talk.

There is enormous power in the practice of committing to goals. There are also numerous side benefits for you, incidental to achieving the goal itself.

I’ll offer two examples from my life. Many years ago, my younger sister called me; she was excited because she’d decided to train for, and run, a marathon. Prior to her call, I’d given no thought to running a marathon myself. After that brief phone call, I was committed.

I registered for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C., at that time about nine months in the future. I bought a book about training for a marathon and followed its plan, including maintaining a running log. Often during that year, I thought I’d never be ready in time. However, I knew the Marines were unlikely to postpone their race just to accommodate me. Still, I ran and finished the race.

As a second example, I recognized, about a year ago, that June 20, 2020, will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I set a goal of launching, on that exact date, a sesquicentennial anthology honoring Verne’s novel. I’ve never co-edited an anthology before, but goals should push you outside your comfort zone, beyond your known limits. They should be big, audacious, and grand.

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

So far, progress toward that goal has been good. Things are proceeding well. We’ve received wonderful stories and look forward to publishing the anthology on time.

Enough about me. What about your goals?

According to this article by Anya Kamenetz, there are mental and physical health benefits to setting and achieving goals. A University of Toronto study showed performance in school improved for all ethnic groups and genders of students who wrote down and worked toward goals.

When you decide to set a goal, I believe it’s important to write it down, not just memorize it. Performing that simple act:

  • Cements the goal and affirms your commitment to it;
  • Gives direction and meaning to your actions;
  • Paints a picture, a vision, of the future to which you aspire;
  • Creates an urge within you that prods you to achieve daily progress and nags you when you fall behind;
  • Helps you overcome setbacks, laziness, disenchantments, and obstacles;
  • Provides immense satisfaction when every milestone and the final goal are met;
  • Boosts confidence in your ability to achieve; and
  • Spurs you on to setting a new goal after each achieved one.

What’s that you say? You have a problem with the entire ‘goal’ concept? You say you don’t set goals anymore because you feel bad about yourself when you fall short?

Well, you may not achieve all your goals. I haven’t met all the goals I’ve set either. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up over failures. Missing a goal doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.

Learn what you can from that failure and set another goal. Consider a smaller one, easier to achieve. Celebrate when you achieve it. You’ll build your confidence one win at a time.  

Pretty soon you’ll be bounding out of bed each day, just like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 17, 2020Permalink

12 Cures for Stir-Craziness

Stay in your homes, the experts tell us. Keep away from others. Don’t gather in bars, restaurants, or theaters. There aren’t any sports. All your club meetings are cancelled. The boss called off that business trip and made you telework. You’re bored, being at home all the time. You’ve gone stir-crazy. What to do?

Here’s my answer—write something.

That’s right. Sit at your keyboard, or grab pen and paper, and write something.

“But,” you’re saying, “I’m not a writer!”

My answer—how do you know?

Here’s my list of stir-craziness cures, staring with the easiest ideas:

  1. Why not make a list of supplies you’re going to need soon? Wow! You’re writing!
  2. Remember that personal organizer book you bought back in 2015, and never used? Dig it out. You could come up with some life goals, and plans to achieve them. Maybe even a personal mission statement. Or a bucket list. You never found time for that before, but you’ve got time now.
  3. Start a journal (or diary, or logbook—call it what you want). Write down whatever occurs to you. Write about social distancing, and how much you hate it. Write about feeling like you’re under house arrest, the isolation and loneliness. Get the emotions out. Write as if nobody will ever read it.
  4. Write emails to relatives and friends you haven’t connected to in a while. Write tweets and Facebook posts. Write old-fashioned letters, on stationery; the Post Office still delivers.
  5. Write an article, essay, or vignette. The topic should be something you know about. At first, write as if you’re not going to send it anywhere. Later, as you look back over it and fix it up, it might not seem half bad. Perhaps it’s publishable.
  6. Start a blog. You can do it. It probably won’t change the world, but it might help you, and that’s a beginning.
  7. If you’re up for fiction, start with something short. There’s the six-word story, the 280-character story (twitterature), the dribble (50 words), the drabble (100 words), sudden fiction (750 words), or flash fiction (1000 words). Editors are looking for good stories of these lengths, and readers like them too.
  8. How about poetry? Can you make words sing, or fly, or lift a heart?
  9. Create a short story, with a few characters, or even just one. Focus on a single effect or mood. Editors and readers love well-written short stories. In fact, I know two editors searching for 3000-5000-word short stories inspired by Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Read the rules here, write your story, and send it in!
  10. Write a non-fiction book. You’re an expert in something. Perhaps you can expand that essay you wrote (see #5 above) to book length. Cookbooks, history books, coffee-table books, memoirs—they get bought all the time. Ooh, how about a travel book? Few people are traveling now, but everyone longs to.
  11. Write a children’s book, or YA (young adult). You’ll need a good imagination and the experience of having been young.
  12. Write the Great American Novel. As they say, writing a novel is a one-day event (as in ‘One day, I’ll write a novel’). You’ve got time now; excuses are gone. No need to wait for November; you can have a personal Nanowrimo now.

You may be cooped up, but your imagination isn’t, your words aren’t. Set them free! There’s no charge for this prescription for stir-craziness written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 22, 2020Permalink

Quarantine and the Writing Scene

The spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus has got us all thinking. Each of us is reacting in his own way. As a writer, my mind turns toward fiction possibilities.

Please don’t take this post as some attempt to minimize or make light of this contagious and deadly disease. The numbers of infected and dead continue to mount as this new virus spreads around the world. Nobody knows how bad this coronavirus will get. Though panic may be unwarranted, so is blind optimism.

So far, I’m not showing any symptoms and am not under quarantine, neither the imposed nor self-directed kind. To my knowledge, that’s also true of everyone I know well. I’m not blogging about quarantines due to any personal experience, but merely because the topic is timely and it interests me as an observer of society.

COVID-19 is causing some changes in our behavior. For the most part, we’re all washing our hands more often and more thoroughly. We’re travelling less, and going to fewer well-attended events. We’re practicing ‘social distancing,’ and greeting others with fist or elbow bumps. We’re staying in our homes more and connecting with each other virtually.

When TV journalists conduct video interviews of symptom-free people who’ve been quarantined out of caution, the people all say they’re binge-watching movies and playing games to pass the time. (Not reading books? Come on!) But they feel lonely and isolated. They want the two weeks to be over.

That’s understandable. We’re social animals. We gain comfort from the close presence of others. If we now must view others as potential bringers of disease, that sets up an internal conflict, a tension between self-preservation and a need for acceptance.

For most writers, a symptom-less quarantine wouldn’t be so bad. Writing is solitary anyway, and necessary social interaction represents an interruption of the writing process. To some extent, writers practice a quasi-quarantine all the time.

Perhaps because of their self-imposed isolation, authors sometimes write about disease pandemics. Early examples include The Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio and The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley.

More recent novels about pandemics are The Plague by Albert Camus, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, and The Stand by Stephen King.

All these works depict horrible results after the disease has run its course. Few novels (except The Plague) show the effects of quarantine, of forced separation.

One extreme fictional example of human separateness, though not involving disease, is The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. In it, citizens of the planet Solaria grow up detesting the physical presence of other humans. They don’t mind robots, but can only talk to other people through holographic communication, a sort of 3-D version of Skype.

Could COVID-19 or some later, more deadly virus, force us to behave like Solarians, alone in our homes, communicating only by email and text, with drones delivering all our supplies direct from robot factories? What would that isolation do to our psyches, to our instincts for close contact?

There’s your next story idea, free of charge. You may thank me for it, but not in person. Alone (with my spouse) in quasi-quarantine, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 15, 2020Permalink

3 States of Writing Flow

Fellow author Andrew Gudgel wrote a great blogpost on December 19, 2019 regarding writing, and I’d like to expand on it.

His post is titled “Water, Molasses, Glass” and you may have to scroll down to get to it. He compares writing to the densities of three substances—water, molasses, and glass.

Sometimes writing comes easily and flows like water. Other times it’s more difficult and flows like thick molasses. What about glass? Well, that’s probably a bad example, since it’s a solid and doesn’t flow at all. The common belief that it’s a slow-moving liquid is false.

Water, Molasses, and Tar

A better third substance would be tar, or pitch. That is a slow-flowing (highly viscous) liquid. Very patient researchers at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) have been watching pitch pour from a funnel since 1930. In those ninety years, nine drops have fallen. Nine drops. Rather a slow way to resurface your driveway.

Let’s get back to the writing comparison.

Water. When writing flows like water, life is good. You know what’s coming next, and nothing’s slowing you down. Without effort, you’re churning out words in a steady stream. People have studied this state of mind and call it ‘Flow.’ I blogged about this phenomenon here. It’s great while it lasts, but it always ends at some point. While you’re in that zone, just go for it.

Molasses. Here’s where writing is harder. You’ve got to force the words out. There are long stretches where you’re just thinking and not producing prose at all. You consider doing something more fun, like, say, cleaning the garage. When in this mental state, I suggest a few strategies:

  1. First, try to recall why you started this writing project in the first place. Something made you want to write this story, and you were enthused about it then. Try to recapture that passion.
  2. Second, write an outline, or revisit the one you previously wrote. Jot down where you think the story is going. Or, since you’re stuck for words, create a mind-map of all the possible alternatives for the part you’re stuck on. It could be different plot paths, different scene descriptions, possible character types, or whatever.
  3. Third, consider writing something else for a while. Trust that your subconscious, your muse, will work on the original problem and come up with a solution.

Tar. At a drop each decade, this is truly writer’s block. I’ve written about writer’s block before, both the diagnosis and the cures. There are several things that might be causing your writer’s block, and you have to pick the right cure for your particular cause.

May your words always flow like water and your rejections and negative reviews flow like tar. That’s the writing wish for you from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 16, 2020Permalink