How to beat writer's block: 5 tips from an aspiring author
Greetings my lovely readers!
Today's topic has been on my mind ever since I found myself craving to write words filled with passion, sorrow, love, fantasy and mystery. It's a part of my daily writing routine as well as millions of other aspiring as well as published authors.
I wake up each morning in love with writing and in love with the characters I created. Some days, however, I tell myself that I am not good enough.
Or I am not famous enough and I never will be (Yes never will be if I don't publish!).
Or that no one will read my books (What books damn it!).
Or simply, I sit at the computer and stare at the empty page, the pointer flickering and waiting patiently (What an interesting pointer 🤣). After a few hours, I close the laptop and with a sorrow-filled heart, I go to sleep with tears in my eyes (Maybe a professional psychiatrist could help?🤪).
Or indeed, I choose to procrastinate because I am not strong enough to block everything for a couple of hours per day (there are 24 of them!). Indeed, sometimes Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter or even random Youtubers sound better than exercising my brain (which by the way needs it a lot) and writing something useful for my first book of the series.
It has been twelve long years of planning and writing, and still: I am only halfway done with finishing my first book manuscript. But I can say that these twelve years of backward and forward steps have made me an expert in writer's block. Well, if I can say so myself.
So much so that I am not ashamed to share these tips with you all.
1) You need to adapt to a system and keep it
Okay. I do get that the same routine may not work for all, but just give it a thought. I began writing at the age of fourteen with an urge to write a novel. I began this journey as a "Pantser". This means that I saw a flash of a story and just began writing it. The thing is, the first ten chapters might have flown greatly, but it had no substance and no proper storyline. I quickly developed writer's block and lost the drive which I had at the beginning of the story. For a few more years, I jumped from story to story and left at least ten incomplete books on my drive.
Even the current book series I am writing was left in this pile of a mess.
But the interesting thing is that when you are in love with something, you will never give up and so, at the age of twenty-four, I started researching novel planning. It gave me another thing to look forward to and at the age of twenty-eight, I know a thing or two about my system and maybe it can also help you finish your first draft.
What is the one great piece of advice I would give as per my long years of adapting to a system? Begin your journey as a planner and slowly regress to a plantser.
See the following 6-point guide:
I) Once you have a flash of a story in your brain, Stop there. DO NOT jump directly to writing. Make sure to think for a second and decide on the genre of your story. If you are unsure where to start, I found a very useful article to determine what genre your books are. Click here to read the article.
II) In a couple of sentences, write a rough premise of the story. This does not need to be long and it does not need to make sense to anyone else but you, the writer.
III) What is your audience? If you are not sure where to start, I found an in-depth article on how to write an audience profile for your book. It can be as detailed or as rough as you wish. Click here to read the article.
IV) I know this may not be easy but try to think of the book titles and make sure they are not overused.
V) No one likes to plan and I get why. But without a plan, my stories reached such a dead end it was impossible to escape from. So, make sure you write a rough plan and at this stage, try to divide the plan into chapters. Click here to see how I did it.
VI) Now you can start writing your first draft. This does not have to be perfect nor does it have to make sense. Remember, you will be perfecting and adding to it in the editing stages.
VII) Now this one is optional but if you even hit a pause in writing and you have an eye for detail why don't you design an example book cover? I have done this multiple times using either Gimp or Canva and it made me switch off a little and love my work a little bit more.
2) You need to keep to a routine
Every aspiring author on this globe has their responsibilities. You may have a full-time job which keeps you occupied for most of the time of the day. You may have kids who need to be looked after. You may have family commitments. You may have a friend commitment. But every single one of us has a spare hour, or even more if we are lucky. So choose carefully what to do in that spare time.
Now, you can choose social media and you can choose TV which is all equal to procrastination. I am not saying that is bad, sometimes we need to switch off completely. But, imagine how far you would have reached if you spared that one hour for writing. In that one hour, you can write anywhere between 150-500 words depending on your pace, your knowledge of the subject, the amount of research required in that one hour and of course how agile you are at that given moment.
Even if you wrote mere 150 words per day and planned to write an 80,000-word novel (average word count for most genres) your first draft would be complete in approximately 1 year and 5 months. Now take that and think about how many years you have lost with procrastination (the reason for the procrastination does not matter). I have lost an incredible 12 years because I choose to do other things apart from writing. Writing which I love so much. Now: Doesn't that make you want to hit your head against the wall?
3) You need to take regular breaks
Sometimes, you need to escape the same routine. Yes, I get that I was adamant that you need to keep to a routine in the previous point. This may seem like the greatest paradox of all time, but you need the balance. You have to bear in mind that not everyone's mental health is the same. Some people need more breaks some people may not need any or just very few. It all depends on how you are as a person and go from there.
I must admit that I do suffer from occasional days of anxiety and depression (just because it's not chronic does not mean I can't use the terms). There might be many reasons why one may feel down at that given moment and when the moments of self-doubts start, you need to walk away from writing and do something which you thoroughly enjoy, even if you feel like you don't want to do anything at all but sleep.
4) You need to change your writing environment from time to time
Imagine you do not have an office at home but just a small table somewhere in your house. All you see is the same wall and smell the same scent. One day, that can inspire you to keep going but the next, you have a total lack of inspiration.
How can you change that?
Get in your car and head to the library or a coffee shop with a peaceful ambience. Be adventurous and take a notepad to the park near your house. Just do anything in your ability to change your surroundings.
5) You need to determine why you have writer's block
In my opinion, there are four main reasons why a writer could be experiencing writer's block. Deep down, the individual knows the real reason and/or reasons why.
I) You are simply exhausted - As I said before, it is important to get a proper balance, otherwise you are risking burnout. You can tell yourself that avoiding social interactions, proper sleep, properly balanced diet is temporary and that your body loves the challenge, however, it does not need to be that way the next day. it is very important to find time in the day for yourself and what makes you happy - your writing and your health will thank you for it.
II) Perfectionism kills the drive - You write your first draft and edit in the process, erasing any mad ideas, typos, errors and plot holes. In the process, however, you are losing your rhythm and your drive. In the end, you are unsure what you are writing about and you keep going back and forth until it becomes an endless cycle. Please, just keep going, pour all your soul into the first draft and don't look back until you wrote "the end" on the last page.
III) Characters don't speak to you anymore - When you are writing, your characters become part of you. You become them as they act on their own accord on the pages of your draft. They decide where they should head and into what they will evolve. It is a bewitching enchantment in our thoughts. So extraordinary, that no one but writers will understand. However, sometimes everything becomes silent and that is the indication that we may need a couple of days rest to urge them to speak once more.
IV) Fear of rejection - We start writing because we love the feeling it brings. We write for ourselves and some even write because they wish to publish. That is where the fear starts. We get to know first-hand, the imposter syndrome, yet we don't realise that this could potentially bring failure. This kind of failure is a mere illusion because success nor failure exists in our reality. And this kind of illusion can bring disaster. A disaster of keeping you away from your draft; a draft which deserves to be finished. So, keep going and ignore illusions of success or failure. Keep going so you don't drown in regrets.
Comments