As I’ve discussed in earlier posts, I’ve learned a lot in my journey as a writer. One of the hardest was overcoming writer’s block and finishing that first draft.
What is the main, and might I argue, sole contributor of writer’s block?
Fear.
I believe that fear is the number one reason writers don’t finish their first drafts. Or share them if they do finish them. I left my first two finished drafts in the drawer for two years… I was worried about my mother reading racy sex scenes in my books, whether anyone would love my story and my characters the way I do, if I would be able to market the books, would a publisher or agent be even remotely interested, and then, of course, what did what I wrote say about me?—on and on, until I stopped writing for a while. Dwelling on concerns like these makes them cripplingly relevant, when they really shouldn’t be. A writer should only be concerned with actually writing.
I am here to tell you that everything will be okay. Writing is fun, or should be, and that’s why we do it. If we can stick to that, I truly believe that the outcomes we seek will follow… although I’ll check back in with you all on that after my book, Circle of Dreams, is actually launched in April!
There is no right or wrong way to overcome our fear, just as there is no right or wrong way to write.
It is with W. Somerset Maugham‘s maxim in mind that I offer the following gems that have helped me overcome small, and not so small, moments of writer’s block:
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
1. Perfection breeds contempt.
Have you ever written a scene so many times that you began to hate the characters? The dialogue? Or even the whole story?
This is because constantly listening to that little nagging voice in your head that tells you your work isn’t good enough causes what I’d like to call “literary claustrophobia.” It’s where perfection digs you a hole that you get stuck in, and then buries you alive in it. “Turn off your internal editor,” Evan Schaeffer of Legal Underground writes.
How do you turn off the internal editor?
You force yourself to finish.
2. Force yourself to finish.
Your nagging internal editor can keep on nagging, but it can’t actually stop you from doing what you need to do. You reduce this white noise by busying your fingers with typing, listening to the sound of the typing, and allowing words from the story to drown out the noise of that whiny voice of doubt.
The most effective way to do this is by writing your draft as quickly as you can.
In a great article called “10 Rules for Writing First Drafts” Demian Farnworth of Copyblogger.com writes, “Forgive me, for I am here to destroy your insecurities. Your excuses. The lie that suggests your first draft must be perfect.” He explains that first drafts “scare people into a state of inactivity,” even the greats like Kurt Vonnegut who once said, “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
Demien suggests three things:
- Barricade the door. It must be just you, the ink, and the paper.
- Allow your imagination to go to weird places. Nothing is off limits. You can clean up your mess later.
- Keep your bottom in your chair until you are done. (For interesting advice on how to speed-write your first draft, read Alan Watt’s The 90 Day Novel.)
Demian’s three suggestions come down to two major concepts: discipline and maintaining a sense of self.
Jane, you may ask, what do you mean by “maintaining a sense of self”?
3. Maintain a sense of self.
There are plenty of times in Life where we’re confronted with the possibility that being ourselves isn’t enough. In writing, this is never true. The minute you deviate from the things that you think, the things you feel, and the things that you believe in, you are no longer writing a story that’s important to you, you’re writing a story that’s important to someone else. This is when writing becomes tedious, exhausting, and even boring. When you start to feel like you’re writing for everyone but yourself, scale back.
Margaret Atwood once said, “The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”
Once you’ve written the truth take a step back…
4. Actually, take 1,000 steps back.
The goal is to actually forget that you wrote a first draft. Why? It’s the only way to bring clarity and some semblance of partiality to your work. We can get caught up in what we want to convey and not realize that we haven’t conveyed it at all. Think about your most hysterical moments, and then think about trying to relay these moments while hysterical, and then you have yourself trying to edit a draft you’ve just finished.
Chuck Palahnuik, author of Fight Club, says he writes, because “life never works except in retrospect.” And Flannery O’Connor adds to this discussion, “… I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
These two observations become especially true when you take time away from your work and think about other things. Though my first two books sat in a drawer for two years, which I admit is excessive, when I finally sat back down with them I came into them fresh. And this allowed me to read as more of an editor than a writer, and allowed me necessary distance from the turn of phrase that pleased me as well as from that which horrified.
5. To write is human, to edit is divine.
Writing and editing two incredibly different skill sets. Consider the advice in point number one, “Perfection breeds contempt,” and then dig deeper: “Imperfection is content.” It is in the strange characterizations, nonsensical details, and plot holes that a story and characters are better understood. Through editing we have the opportunity to embrace those imperfections, reign them in, and massage them into a flow that has resonance to the story, characters, and hopefully our readers!
6. Outlines are good. Surprises are better.
E.L. Doctorow advised, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the trip the whole way.”
Give yourself the ability to be surprised by your own work. Think about how or why your protagonist would say things, as opposed to what he or she would say. Think about why you chose to write a certain scene at night. Then go against your own thinking and write it in the day time. Allow yourself to plot a course that keeps you ahead of yourself by only a few steps, so that you never beat yourself to the finish line and get bored with your work.
Keep yourself in the habit of waking yourself up with new writing surprises everyday.
7. Don’t write sometimes. Write often. And write lots, even if you think that 90% of your writing is pure garbage.
Ray Bradbury once said, “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.” This can be said about different niches of the writing industry, and it can also be said about our personal career and writing endeavors. Writing rarely or in small amounts leaves your brain muscle flabby. Starting up again gets harder and harder. Great writers are used to bouts of terrible writing.
Maya Angelou, writer of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, has this to say:
“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’ … And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’”
I’d like to close with words from Sylvia Plath: “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
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