I never get writer’s block. That may sound like a bold or obnoxious claim, but it’s true. If I want to write, then I sit down and write. If I don’t want to write but I need to, I sit down and write. So, if you want to write and can’t, or need to write and just don’t want to, here are a few ideas that I use – orthodox and unorthodox – to make the words happen whenever I feel unmotivated, disinterested, or just plain grumpy.
- Set a ridiculously short time limit and keep it to the millisecond. This one is for the competitive ones. Depending on how quickly you write and how quickly you lose focus, you can tailor it to yourself. Five minutes. Six minutes. Twelve. It can vary wildly. But the point is to be forced to cut yourself off before you get bored. Then go for a walk, get a snack, watch (an equally ridiculously short amount of) TV – and then come back for another sprint. What does this do? It retrains your brain. Instead of letting it get frustrated and overwhelmed and then determined to quit, you give it short bursts of work with instant reward. Those little writing sessions become a triumph; they become something to look forward to. The more you enjoy it, the more you want to do it.
- Give yourself an interview like you’re a NYT Bestselling author. I know this strategy sounds wild but hear me out. Ask yourself insightful, leading questions about your plot, your ideas, your motivation, and your process. Try to ask yourself questions you might not know the answers to yet. What does this do? It gives you a new way to think about your book as well as a new way to talk about it. In giving answers to my own questions, I routinely stumble upon some truth about the novel that I hadn’t fully recognized before. You can one hundred percent recruit someone to do the interviewing for you, but I have found that I ask myself the best questions – the questions that matter the most to me. Let yourself be silly and have fun. Jot down your answers for future reference.
- Choose your characters’ theme songs. I’m a big music listener, and I learned early on to use playlists to my advantage. Writing a sad scene? Cue Titanic OST. Action scenes? Pull up Two Steps from Hell and let it rip. What does this do? If you’re a music person, you already know what songs are going to trigger a big emotional response in you. Let them help set the mood. Whenever I hear a song that perfectly encapsulates one of my characters’ arc or current state of being, I add it to the list, and I use it to kickstart my creative brain when I sit down to write. It puts me in the right mental state to dive into the story. The other cool part of this is, if you write to the same playlist often enough, as soon as your brain hears it, it will go into writing mode – just like training your body to a bedtime routine or a workout routine.
- Write when you’re tired. I’m talking can-barely-keep-your-eyes-open, you’re-forgetting-words type of tired. At the end of an exhausting day, when you would rather lay down on a bed of nails than pull out your computer or notebook, take advantage of your altered state and write. If you are truly about to pass out from exhaustion, use method 1 a few times and be done. But try it. What does this do? When you’re that tired, your inhibitions are lowered. Your inner critic might already be asleep. This allows you to write without fear. Writing without fear may very well allow you to write faster because you’re not second guessing yourself. Will you churn out some trash? Very possible; I have literally fallen asleep while writing but kept writing in my sleep, and I woke up to a paragraph of legible words but in illegible order. But I have also stumbled upon new ideas in this fashion. I have written myself into new scenarios I had never considered for the story. You never know what you might find. Keep the good. Throw out the bad.
In my next post, we’ll look at four more strategies I use to keep myself writing. In the meantime, stuck or not, give one of these a try and see if you can’t trick yourself into having some fun!
