Hey Gang,
Joe is stuck in an airport in the middle of nowhere today, so I’m jumping in a little early this week.
I wanted to talk about what to do when your brain just won’t kick in and do what is necessary to get the job done. There are days when you just get stuck. Whether it’s your writing, or life in general, you find yourself in a rut and you don’t know how to get out. It can be so frustrating. You might feel overwhelmed or lost. But there is hope. (I sound like an infomercial.) The following two words are all you need to remember when this happens to you.
Move Forward
It’s that simple. Sometimes we get so caught up in the details that we forget to move forward. Sometimes you don’t know what the next scene is, but you might know the one three scenes away, so write that. The idea applies to real life too. Feel like you’re eating or doing the same things every day. Do some little things to change things up. Drink your tea from a fancy china cup, buy a new decorative pillow for the couch or bed that makes you smile. Hire a baby sitter to take your kids out, so that you can stay home and take a nap or take a bubble bath.
These things also help if you’re writing. Sometimes we need to shake up those staid routines and bring a little light back into our lives. I teach that in my Muse class. But I thought, for today at least, I’d focus on what to do when the words just won’t come. This is taken from my FAST DRAFT class. And they are tools/tricks of the trade that I use all the time.
- Move away from the computer and grab a journal and pen. Sometimes writing things out long hand is all it takes to kick that brain into gear.
- Concentrate on a particular character in your WIP (Work in Progress) and write a scene for him or her.
- Move to the next chapter or scene. Sometimes you just get stuck, but you know what you want to write in chapter 20. Cool, write chapter 20. You can go back and write those other pages later. You’ll still be moving forward, even if you write chapter 3, after chapter 20, because it’s new pages.
- Give yourself a time limit of 20 minutes to 2 hours to write. You can’t move away from the computer or paper until your time is up. Your fingers must be typing/writing the entire time.
- Step away and listen to some music, go for a drive, walk around the block. Do those stretches I talked about. Give your brain a moment to relax, and boom, it will be ready to write again.
- Free write something, anything. It doesn’t have to be a part of your book. Free associate with a word, or a picture you see. This kind of diversion can be good because it often leads to a breakthrough when our subconscious demands to deal with the problem we just left. A few moments away can often give you much needed perspective.
- Brainstorm. You don’t have a great deal of free time in this process, but if you have a chance to chat with another writer friend brainstorm with them about whatever problem you might have.
- Make yourself a note and keep writing. There are many times when you’ll see something like this in one of my first drafts: “They kiss, but something happens and there’s an explosion. Something has to happen that yanks them apart for good and then wham.” I write that down, and then later when I see that, my brain instantly knows that to do. It’s almost as if it’s been ruminating on it while I stepped away.
- I don’t encourage a lot of chatter during this, but if you have things that work for you to get you kick-started creatively feel free to share.
- The No. 1 thing that works for me is incentives. If I write 20 pages I get (name your guilty pleasure). It might be Mexican food, ice cream (You see a theme) a movie, a nap (one of my all-time favorites) or a massage (my second favorite). Sometimes it’s chocolate, and sometimes it’s dinner with friends. There is that part of us that always wants a treat when we’ve worked hard. And we deserve it.
So what works for you? How do you get out of your ruts? Tell me, I really want to know.
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Great advice. I also find moving forward on a different project will shake things loose. The trick is to just get moving and not stay stuck.
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Can I also add that if it goes on for a long time, it wouldn’t hurt to have a physical? Especially for women in their 50s. If your B12 levels are low, if you’re anemic, or if your thyroid stops working it can all interfere with your thinking processes. (Did you know hypothyroidism can mimic Alzheimer’s symptoms? That you can suffer a “brain fog”.) My writing suffered for far too long because I kept putting off my physical.
I was writing, but I’d look at it the next day and it wouldn’t make much sense. Or it didn’t sound like me anymore. Once I was on the right medicine, my brain started working properly again and the words are flowing now.
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Leah, I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and I so relate to that brain fog!!! They are changing up my meds, so I’m hoping I get back on track soon.
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They’re still playing with my levels (they’ve already doubled them once, looks like it’ll have to go to triple the first dosage) but I noticed an improvement right after they started. And I’ve stopped falling asleep at my desk every hour or so. That was definitely an improvement.
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Note to self, get a physical. Thanks!
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Great advice! My Father used to say “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” So even if leaving the project for a minute feels wrong, do something, anything and then come back to it. Thanks Candace!
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I agree with your dad. Was it Nora Robert who said that it’s better to fix a page of bad writing, than to have a blank page?
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Thanks for the advice. In the past when I’ve tried to finish a story I would get stuck and then give up. My latest story that I’m working on I’ve approached completely different and now I just write whatever scene comes to my mind. The great thing is, is that as I write the scenes,new scenes come to my mind and then when I write those scenes more scenes pop in my head. And now I have more than 30,000 words, which I guess isn’t that much, but it’s more than I’ve ever written before and I’m really proud. This time I’m going to finish no matter how hard it gets.
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Jason, 30,000 words is a very solid start. Good for you!
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I’ve just started working with notecards and find them very non-threatening. They’re small, I can mix them up, and if I throw a bunch of them away because they’re useless, I haven’t lost anything. I’m using them now to brainstorm scenes.
Too much coffee is also a peril. I jazz myself up so that the only thing I’m good for is cleaning out closets before I crash.
And then, for the timer idea, there’s always Write or Die, which makes it fun. I understand you can now download it, but I haven’t done that yet.
Very helpful post. Thanks.
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Hey Anne, what are on the notecards? Scene ideas? Characters? Just curious.
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First just general brainstorming. Now scenes. Holly Lisle’s web site has some ideas on how to use them for plotting and I’m trying that out.
I’m on the Motivated Writer’s list with you and came here from your link. I also enjoyed reading the interview with you on emmyellis.
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Hi Candace
Thank you for the great post on beating the block.
I loved the points you outlined.
I cut & pasted them to memorize.
Thank you for sharing,
Love & Best Wishes,
RKCharron
xoxo
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The best way I have found to get my mind working again, is to get my body moving. Weather permitting, I get my IPod, loaded with my best action sequence inducing tunes loud enough to block out the world, and go for a fast paced walk outside. The solitude of being alone in my head with the tunes while out in the real world just does something for me to get things flowing again. Unfortunately, it may not always be exactly where I left off, but that is ok. Working on a new angle always leads me back to where I needed to be.
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I need to move like that. I would feel so much better!
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Great post. I find that if I’m stuck I need to jump around my WIP. Write something that I know that needs to happen, write the end, whatever. Also, there are a lot of books out there with different writing prompts. If I’m really stuck, I’ll open the book up to a random page and write about whatever prompt is there.
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I’m a big proponent of writing your ending first! And as I said, always moving forward.
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Awesome post!! I have a very hard time with #8 on the list. I can’t seem to get my brain to move forward until the problem on the page is resolved. Unfortunately this means I become fixated on a single paragraph or even a simple feeling for days. What I’ve found that helps me work out a solution sooner is to listen to music that has a similar message and tone. I also swear by yoga. Getting the mind to be still for a bit lets the right answers come through.
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Candace: Thanks for the article. I bet lots of writers will find it useful.
Allow me to share with you a ploy I’ve used, in hopes that others might find it useful.
Lately I was stuck at the worst possible place in writing a novel. I couldn’t figure out just what I should write in the opening chapter. Since the novel is an adventure-romance, I thought I should start the project with an action scene in which the protagonist does something that will grab the reader, has a dash of sex (i.e. sexuality) in it, and foreshadows what’s to come in the rest of the novel.
I tried out scenario after scenario, but none of them sounded right. I just wasn’t comfortable with any of these possibilities. And if none of them interested me, how could I expect any of them to interest the readers?
Finally I had a Eureka moment: I shouldn’t begin the novel this way. It’s all wrong for this kind of work and my kind of readers. I should start it with some other type of scene.
But which type? In the synopsis for this novel, I mentioned (very briefly) an incident some years before the main narrative sequence, one that had considerable impact on the protag and her subsequent actions (or else I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all). I’d planned originally to incorporate this incident into the novel via a flashback a few chapters into the story. Now I realized I should make this incident what Chapter One is all about, and ditch the flashback. In short, I should begin at the beginning.
This time, it worked. For me, at least. Now the novel is coming along nicely, at last.
In short, if I’m stumped about how to write a scene or sequence, maybe I SHOULDN’T be writing it at all. Something else should be happening; I simply need to figure out what.
Here’s my definition of writer’s block: Your muse’s way of telling you you’re headed in the wrong direction.
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One of my writing pals says: NO EXCUSES. (Oh, wait…that’s you!) So I try not to let myself off the hook for moving forward just because the words aren’t flowing or I’m not in the mood. [Like today
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Getting up and exercising can help, as can allowing myself to take a break to lie in bed and “nap” — which usually leads to daydreaming about the next scene or two. But sometimes, like today, I just make myself BICHOK (butt in chair, hands on keyboard) and write.
And BTW, I have major sympathy for the lack of energy and brain fog. I have fibromyalgia, which causes both, plus lots of pain, which–you got it–causes lack of energy and brain fog. Sigh. Then you don’t sleep, which causes…sing it with me…
Still, I do pretty well and I won’t complain…because there are no excuses!
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Thanks for the post, Candy. #5, step away, works best for me, and it’s usually to go off and do something with my hands – create an artist trading card or garden (which is really just pulling weeds, but it doesn’t require a lot of brain power).
I also liked the ideas from your Out of the Box workshop. Just wanted to let people know they can get a hard copy of that over at http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/out-of-the-box-on-the-page/5544539
– Heidi