Fighting Writer's Block

You have a seriously wonderful idea, the kind to which Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes are attached, and you race to your keyboard to get it down before the muse leaves you without a word, page, or even so much as a muse-turd on your chair.  You begin to write, gleeful that your idea will be the greatest thing since Shakespeare wrote "MacBeth."  Then it happens.  You've written yourself into a corner, and you can't get out.  Or worse...You, as a writer, find yourself completely devoid of ideas.  Nothing perkolating in your brain, no little plot-bunnies...Nada.  What do you you?

Writer's block is the often-mocked but very real phenomenon that few people aside from writers can understand.  It's a need to write, a yearning to create, but the frustrating realization that you have no ideas or that ideas you've had have petered out.  I liken it to creative blue-balls.  As a writer, I've fallen victim to the dreaded brain-fart many times.  And yet, despite the cruelty of the muses, I still manage to write and get some decent work out there.  One of the most-often asked questions to professional writers is this:  How do you overcome writer's block?  The answer isn't simple, and it's different for everyone, but it's one I'm happy to share.

Writer's block, in my mind, comes when you're unable to focus or when you've got too much on your mind.  They sound like one in the same, but they're not really.  I'm a pretty focused guy, but I tend to  over focus on whatever happens to be going on in my life.  Bills, children, rabid were-chickens, it doesn't matter.  They're all things that distract your thought processes from what you really need to be doing, which is writing.  I have a great many things that I do to overcome writer's block, but they can all be boiled down into two categories.

• Physical Activity - Let's face it, no matter what you're writing, you're still sitting on your butt typing somewhere.  There comes a time when your body demands activity, and your brain needs it too.  So find something physical to do.  Push away from your keyboard, peel your butt out of your chair, and walk away for a little while.  Even an hour.  Walk around the block, lift weights, jog, it doesn't matter.  Something that you can do to work the kinks out of your spine and "jog" your brain.  For me, there's nothing that pumps my creativity like Judo.  The martial art I study, Kajukenbo, incorporates Judo as a part of it.  So if I'm feeling stressed or blocked (mentally), I'll put on my gi and head to the dojo.  There's always someone there who wants to roll, and we'll take turns pounding each other until I can't breathe and I'm so exhausted that my body no longer wants movement.  In fact, it usually screams that it was sorry for wanting anything so silly to begin with.  But what comes out of it are plot points, dialogue, character development.  I don't know why it works, but it does.  Besides, I love the sounds of snapping cartelidge and screaming students.  For other people, a solitary jog is a good thing because the rhythmic beating of your feet as you run allows you to shut down most other functions and just concentrate on the story that's bugging you.  For others, it's deep meditation.  Find something, anything, physical to do to give yourself a break.
• Write Something Else - But you're suffering from writer's block!  How can you write something else!?!  Easy.  You know how, when you're working on a story, you get that little giggling voice that throws all sorts of other ideas into your head?  Put your main story away and work on one of them.  Write an article on something you enjoy (or even that you loathe, thereby pounding your brain into submission), or even write a *gasp* blog entry.  You guessed it, that's what I'm doing right now.  Currently, I'm working on a story and I needed a break to get back to it.  Breaks are good...Trust me on this one. 

Above all, remember this:  Writer's block can only affect your productivity if you let it.  Don't be a slave to it.  Use it instead.  Find something to distract your distractions and, in the end, you'll discover that writer's block isn't something to be scared of. 

Until next time, WRITE ON!

Learn to Read...

Some of the greatest writers, I think, have a serious problem with reading.  Not that they're illiterate, mind you, but that, when called upon to do so, they can't read their own stuff.  Part of being a writer is promoting your work, and that means going to conventions and taking part in Q&A panel discussions and actually reading a snippet of your latest opus.  And while the story or section they're reading may be the best thing written since Richard Matheson put pen to page, they stand at the podium and stutter.  They read with all the emotional content of cardboard and stumble over their own words.  Now, keep in mind, I know award-winning poets whose work is of such a high caliber that it could bring tears to the eyes of the Sphinx, but when the time comes to actually read it aloud, they kill all the content.  Let me tell you about a few of the ways I've overcome this problem.

To me, it isn't so much reading your story as it is performing it.  The audience is there because they want to be entertained, want to hear your words, want to see if you have as much confidence in your own work.  So own it.  I've long said that everyone should, at some point in their lives, take at least a course on public speaking, or acting, or both.  My background is in theater, so getting into the heads of characters, especially those I've written, is easy for me.  When I'm on stage, at the podium, or wherever they have me, I don't just stand there and read the words.  I feel compelled to vocally act them out.  It draws the reader further into your work, and, as an added bonus, the feedback the convention promoters get will ensure they'll keep you in mind to invite back next year.  When you wrote the words, you felt something.  There was some emotion you were trying to convey to the readers.  Now is the time to let that out.

But, you ask, what about stage-fright?  There is a statistic running around that states that more people are afraid of speaking in public than they are of dying.  Absurd, perhaps, but true in my experience.  So how does one overcome stage-fright?  You can try all the old stand-by's like picturing the audience naked (which only serves to make me giggle like a maniac) or focusing an inch or two above the tallest person's head.  But to me, the only real way to get over stage fright comes in two steps.  First, you have to realize that the absolute worst thing that can happen is they (the audience) don't remember you at all.  And the second worst thing that can happen is they don't like it.  They're not going to kill you, they're not going to throw things, you're not going to spontaneously combust on stage.  What happens if they don't like it? Usually, they'll still smile, they'll still sit in silence or fidget, but that's about it.  I've yet to see someone at any convention, author panel, or reading stand up and yell "You suck!" or pull a Kanye West on an author.  It just doesn't happen, and even if it does, so what?  Anyone who would do such a thing is an ass-hat anyway, so what do you care?

The second way to get over stage fright comes in two parts.  First, practice.  Learn your material.  "But I wrote it" you say.  Sure, but make sure you remember it the way you wrote it.  Practice it over and over until you know it by heart and don't really need the book in front of you.  That allows you to connect with the audience by making eye-contact, which is something that Bella Lugosi used on audience members when he did the live stage production of Dracula.  The second part is also practice, but of a different sort.  You can see this one coming, can't you?  Get out there and actually do it.  Not your friends and families, not a room full of teddy bears and action figures, but in front of a live audience.  Take any opportunity to get up in front of a live audience to speak.  It takes time, but eventually the butterflies in the stomach will go away.

In your reading, get animated.  Jump up and down, scream and shout, cry, laugh...Show them the emotion you want your piece to have.  Writing is visceral.  Reading should let the readers see into that world and let them feel the story's heartbeat.

Until next time, WRITE ON!

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