What Does Writer’s Block Feel Like?

This prompt from 642 Things to Write About amuses me, since writer’s block is exactly what the book aims to abolish.

So what does writer’s block feel like? Well, it’s too simple just to say that it’s frustrating, but that’s a good place to start. It is extremely frustrating. Have you ever been telling a story to a friend and got hung up on a particular word? You know exactly what you mean to say, and you can maybe even think of other ways to say it, but you can’t come up with that one word that you really want to use. It’s right on the tip of your tongue – you can taste it – but for some reason it won’t come out and the entire story is ruined because of it. That’s kind of what writer’s block feels like, except multiplied by the thousands of words that won’t come out.

A lot of people think that writing is easy – and for some lucky people it is – but when writer’s block hits it’s like being struck blind, deaf, and dumb. Imagine that you’ve had years and years of training in a particular field, and even more years of experience working in that field. You know your stuff. You’re good at your job. Now imagine that, sporadically and without any kind of warning, all of that knowledge and experience is wiped from your head and you’re left floundering around with absolutely no idea of what you just did or what to do next. That’s kind of what writer’s block feels like, and you have no clue or indication at all of when (or if) your brain might start working again.

Have you ever desperately wanted to finish something, but couldn’t because of circumstances outside of your control? Maybe you suffered an injury during some kind of big competition that you’d been training for. Maybe your car broke down and made you miss a huge event that you’d been planning for months. Maybe you’d gathered the courage to confess your feelings to someone, just before finding out that they’d confessed their feelings to someone else. You had something in your life that felt like the most important thing in the world, but it slipped through your fingers and you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to get it back again. That’s kind of what writer’s block feels like, except that the troublesome outside force is actually an evil blankness inside your own head.

Long story short, writer’s block feels like incompetence. It feels like you’ve been reduced to a base state, a blank slate, and you have no idea how you’re supposed to bring yourself back.

So next time you hear someone complaining that they have writer’s block, maybe consider giving them a hug.

Have you ever experienced writer’s block? What do you think it feels like? What do you do to try and break through it? Please share!

Also, a reminder that I am running a contest throughout the month of March. For each comment you post on my blog throughout the month, you will receive one entry toward a draw for a hard-copy of my zombie apocalypse novel, “Nowhere to Hide”! Please note that in order to accept the prize, I will need you to give me a mailing address where I can have the book sent. If the winner drawn did not intend to enter the contest and/or does not want the book, I will draw another name. Please also note that obvious spam/duplicate comments/etc. will not be counted toward an entry…play fair! And good luck! ❤

Focus in a Sea of Distractions

We’re on the homestretch, and Week 10 of The Artist’s Way is about “recovering a sense of self-protection”. I’m not sure that “self-protection” was the right choice of words…I’d have said something more along the lines of “recovering a sense of focus on what’s important”.

Basically, week 10 talks about a number of issues that we deal with (and sometimes enforce upon ourselves) that cause us to lose our focus and drift away from our dreams. One such issue is not given an actual title in the chapter, but I would refer to it as the “I’ll Do It When…” syndrome. This is when we set arbitrary limits for ourselves that don’t really mean anything in the long run, but make us feel as though we’re protecting ourselves from pain. For instance, I might finish editing my manuscript this month and have it all set for self-publication and then suddenly turn around and say, “No, you know what, I’m not well-known enough to sell a book. I’ll wait until I have, hmmm…say, 200 followers on my blog before I publish.” The limit is completely arbitrary (what’s so special about the number 200?) and means positively nothing (number of blog followers, in the end, has nothing to do with whether the book will sell), so the only point of it is to hold myself back, and why would I want to do that? As we’ve mentioned before, the name of the game is fear. We impose limits on ourselves because we’re terrified of the unknown. In this example I might be terrified that if I self-publish I won’t sell any books, or worse, I’ll sell a few and then get a wave of horrible reviews. So I (hypothetically) give myself these little limits that I have to reach before I’ll be willing to make the leap, and then when that moment comes I find another reason to limit myself. The cycle continues.

The other issues addressed in week 10 are workaholism, drought, fame, and competition. Workaholism is exactly what it sounds like; the artist in question lets their entire word become awash in their day job, to the point that they can never “find time” to work on their art. This isn’t simply the normal situation where an artist has a day job and thus has less time to work on their craft; this is actively seeking out more work to do because the artist is scared to work on their craft (for any of the reasons previously discussed). And this doesn’t necessarily have to involve a day job with an employer; a house wife who longs to be a painter may insist that she has no time to paint because she has to vacuum the floors for the second time today, and remake all the beds, and cut up and wash all the fruit and veggies in the fridge, and…well, you get the idea.

Drought is pretty much exactly what it sounds like…writers might call it “writer’s block”. This is when you have no ideas, everything you create seems like crap, and you have no idea how to move forward. You begin to doubt yourself. Drought is a state that every single artist deals with at some point, but depending on what kind of artist you are and what kind of person you are, you could push through it and come out stronger on the other side, or you could give up entirely. Drought has been well known to be the end of many artist careers.

Fame is synonymous with ego in this case. Even if I’ve been successful so far (say, by self-publishing and selling my first hundred books), I get caught up in the fact that I’m not famous yet. There are certain things that we equate with being successful, and unfortunately “fame” is one of them. By becoming the artist we had hoped to become, we also expect to start being adored by the public, receive fan letters, get asked to do book readings or get invited to a convention. If these things don’t happen, we assume that we’ve done something wrong. It’s not enough to meet our dreams and maybe even make some money at them…suddenly we want to be a celebrity too, and now we’re focusing on that instead of our art. Our art gets shuffled to the background.

Competition is based in good old fashioned jealousy. It boils down to seeing others succeed and feeling as though they somehow beat you. For example, say I have a close friend who is also a writer. We began writing around the same time and we often write in similar genres and the like. Now say that I’m stuck in the editing process, while she has already pushed forward, self-published, and has recently landed on the bestselling e-book list on Amazon. My sense of competition kicks in and I begin to feel like I’ve “lost”. The possibility of succeeding becomes moot because I’ve already “failed”. I lose the will to keep moving forward.

This is a chapter that I actually found quite interesting because I have, in one form or another, experienced each of these issues. I’ve played the “workaholic” by finding a million other things that “had” to get done that weren’t my writing. I’ve created arbitrary limits for myself, like telling myself that my zombie novel has to be the first thing I publish, even if it’s not necessarily my best work. I’ve put myself down because others are out there achieving what I’ve always dreamed of…they “beat” me to it. I told myself that I can’t be successful because I’m not “famous” enough (via, not enough followers, never getting comments, etc). And I’ve definitely gone through the drought process…many times, in fact, and every time I consider that this might be the time I quit all together.

These are all things that I expect every artist deals with, because they all boil down to human emotion and instinct. We want to be the best, we want to be loved, we feel that if we’re doing things right they should be easy, and we hate being afraid. The key, as with many things, is to recognize the issues and move on from them, and it helps knowing that others are going through the exact same things. That’s why communities (like the #MyWANA Twitter community for writers) are so great. No one has to suffer alone.

Have you ever dealt with workaholism, drought, “fame”, competition, or a raging case of the “I’ll Do It When…” syndrome? How did you get past it? Please share!

5 Reasons You Should Be Writing Fan Fiction

As I mentioned yesterday in my accountability post, for the next little while I’m setting aside my work-in-progress and picking up my Final Fantasy III/VI novelization fan fiction. Now here’s the thing… There are a lot of writers (and readers) out there who think very poorly of fan fiction. They think its not “real” writing, or they associate it with a bunch of creepy, sweaty fanboys/girls sitting in a dark room, plucking out a wish fulfillment fantasy where a disturbingly perfect character who just so happens to have their exact name gets it on with Buffy or Edward Cullen, or one of the My Little Ponies (*wigged-out-shudder*). And yes, that stuff does exist, and there’s a special place for it far, far away from me, but there is also a lot of good fan fiction out there if you care to look for it, and I personally believe that fan fiction serves several very important purposes in the writing community.

1. It gives you a break and let’s you enjoy writing for a while.
Even those of us who love writing with all out heart and soul want to smash our computer against a wall and/or burn all our notebooks every now and then. Things happen (writer’s block, bad critiques, lost work that wasn’t backed up, etc) that enrage us and make us want to give up on writing forever. That’s where fan fiction can be helpful; it’s easy (because the world is already created for you), it’s fun (because you get to write your favorite characters), and it keeps you moving forward. You might even find, while writing fan fiction, that you come up with a great idea to continue that original fiction you so recently considered tossing off a cliff. Seriously, give it a try…you might find that writing a bit of fan fiction considerably lowers your writing-related stress.

2. It gives you practice and let’s you get the “bad” out.
Yes, I’ll admit it, a lot of the fan fiction out there is beyond awful. But have you ever heard that oft-repeated adage: “Practice makes perfect”? Lame, perhaps, but true. No one ever wrote a masterpiece on their very first try. With the vast, near limitless options to toy with, fan fiction offers you that ability to keep practicing and practicing and practicing, which can only help you become better. Scrawling fan fiction helps you to get down your bad writing, see that it’s bad, and then make it better. Any writing will do this, of course, but fan fiction makes it easier because instead of struggling with your one story over and over again, or constantly wracking your brain to come up with new ideas, you can just jump in someone else’s sandbox and play away.

3. You can just jump in someone else’s sandbox and play away.
Some people say that nothing worth doing is easy. I beg to differ. Yes, effort is a big deal and most things in life are going to be difficult, but sometimes, to keep ourselves from going mad, we have to find the easy out. Fan fiction is that in spades. This is a whole world that has already been created for you, with established characters who have already had tons of work put into them. All you have to do is think of something for them to be doing. That’s it. Play away. Have some fun! Explore! As children this is how we learn and grow, but as adults we forget the importance of real play. Take a page out of the book of babies and toddlers and learn via good old fun and exploration!

4. The community is extremely powerful.
There are lots of websites out there for sharing fan fiction, but the one in particular that I use is FanFiction.net. It’s a great site with a great community, and chances are if you share something there someone is going to find it, read it, and comment on it, and that is pure gold for a writer. We crave feedback, even if its not necessarily good feedback. We want to know, at the very least, that someone is reading. Fan fiction is wonderful for this because of the vast numbers of people who enjoy it. For example, years back I wrote a Harry Potter fan fiction featuring the Marauders. I finished that story years ago, and to this day I get the occasional review landing in my inbox. It might not sound like much, but a single review on a story you wrote ages ago can really mean a lot when you’re currently struggling with your current works. Community is important to keep a writer sane and moving forward, and the fan fiction community is a surprisingly strong one.

5. It keeps you writing.
When you’re a writer (or you aspire to be) actually writing is the most important thing to do. In this brave new world of writing conventions, social media, and author platforms, writers tend to forget that the real deal is putting words to paper. Fan fiction helps with this. Any kind of writing – even the creepy kind I mentioned earlier that I have a restraining order out against – is worth doing if it keeps you putting words to paper. There is no writer without the process of writing, so whatever you can write to keep that process moving forward is a good thing to write.

So now that I’ve thoroughly convinced you, what are you waiting for? Fan fiction could be just the thing you need! I know it’s what I need right now, so I’ll see you all on the other side of a new chapter of Returning Hope.

Accountability Tuesdays: Week 18

Man, the couches at Wapasu Lodge camp feel so cushy on the day you fly home. Why do you think that is?

So here I am again, plucking out an accountability post as I wait to travel. There have been worse ways to spend a day, let me tell you, and since this one results in my returning home to my baby girl and husband, I’m as happy as a pig.

(No feces necessary. Pigs just seem to be rather happy creatures overall.)

Health and Body Image Goal
I have to admit, I’ve waned on this one, but there is an up side. Starting about Wednesday I started shying away from the Body Revolution videos for two reasons. One, its really hard to get up in the morning to do them, especially when your camp neighbors ensure that you’re not asleep at night until a good two hours after you wanted to be. And two, I was finding that combined with the diet (or as close as I could get to the diet with what’s available at camp) I was feeling too god damn weak to do the exercises! I’m sorry Jillian, but my body seems to require significantly more calories than you think it does.

So anyway, I ditched the diet for the more enjoyable method of eating what I want while keeping a keen eye on my calorie and fat intake, and since the weather made a turn for the better, I traded Jillian for the Zombies! Run! app. I plan to continue Body Revolution at home (and possibly next shift if my neighbors are a little less ragingly inconsiderate), but for the past few days I’ve just been enjoying getting some fresh air and running from imaginary zombies. Win-win.

Editing Goal
This is another one that has waned, but mainly because I’ve run out of printed copy to edit. My manuscript is several hundred pages long, so I only printed out the first few chapters, and I think I’ve done all with them that I can. Next shift I’ll bring up the USB stick with my soft copy on it and print out some more. Until then, c’est la vie.

1,000,000 Word Goal
I wasn’t expecting this past week to add up to much because with layoffs happening all around me I’ve been about ten times busier at work than usual. Combine that with the nosy neighbors/loss of sleep issue and the fact that I’ve hit a roadblock on my work-in-progress, and I figured I wasn’t going to have anything to report. Imagine my surprise when I counted up all the blog posts I’ve been writing in advance this past week and found that they totaled 6769 words. Not too shabby, huh? I won’t complain, for sure, because I’ll be lucky to get that total over the next twoweeks.

Which is to say I plan to be terribly busy playing My Little Pony with my daughter. So long coworker suckers!

The Trick is to do it Sneakily…

Despite the fact that I currently have no fewer than four projects on the go (not counting the manuscript I’m in the process of editing) I have recently had one hell of a case of writer’s block. On new than a couple of days I found myself staring at my notebook for hours, unable to come up with the words. Even worse, when I did find words they were terrible ones. The bits that I was managing to get onto paper were making me gag.

It was with that gag reflex in tow that I found myself searching the Internet for ideas on battling that great evil we know as writer’s block. I skipped past a number of ideas and suggestions before landing on a list of writing exercises, on which I found a simple prospect: observe the world around you right now…describe it in as much detail as possible.

I whipped out my pen and notebook and began immediately, but soon found my pen stalling. While an interesting idea, it wasn’t exactly exciting to describe an industrial control room…it’s pretty much just desks and computers. But then I got a different idea…I glanced at the coworker to my left and began describing him: his face, his clothes, his mannerisms…whatever I could see or knew from having talked to him. Then I moved on to the next coworker and the next. I wrote everything I knew about them or could see by a quick glance in their direction. I wrote about the bosses and the secretary. I wrote about the field technicians who came in the discuss issues. I wrote about the engineers we share the building with. I wrote thoroughly and honestly. Over the course of three days I wrote over 3000 words just on descriptions of the people around me at work.

I thought this turned out to be an excellent exercise for two reasons. For one, character descriptions is something that is difficult to get right when writing fiction, since you want your reader to be picturing the character the way you do, but you don’t want to bore them to death by ranting on and on about physical details and personality traits. I found over the course of this exercise I slowly got more information in while being more succinct. The other reason is that when I was finished with my exercise I found myself presented with approximately two dozen perfectly viable characters. Names would have to be changed, to protect me from my own brutal honesty, but other than that I now have a small smorgasbord of possible characters to choose from the next time I need a new addition to one of my stories.

What do you think? Does my exercise sound like a worthwhile one? Will you give it a try? Or have you done something similar before? Please share! 🙂

I am the Queen of Pants(ers)!

Every year as the beginning of NaNoWriMo sneaks ever closer the forums light up with a wide array of greetings, games, debates, emotional rants, and pleas for help. There are certain topics that rise from the dead year after year, and one such is a poll of sorts: “Are you a planner or a pantser?”

“Planner” is pretty self explanatory…you plan your novel before attempting to write it. You might create character sheets, sketch maps of the world you’re creating, jot down notes on particular scenes, or even lay out your chapters step-by-step with everything except the actual prose. You are organized.

“Pantser” is a less intuitive (non)word, so for those who have never heard it before, it’s short for “by the seat of your pants”-er. This is someone who doesn’t plan at all. They might have an idea for their novel – maybe even a couple of character names – but that’s as far as it goes. These people approach the first of November with a strange mixture of courage and insanity, with no real idea of what is going to end up on the paper/computer screen as they write.

For NaNoWriMo’s 2008 through 2011 I was definitely a pantser. Even during the year I did a fanfiction, and the year I did a rewrite (I’m a rebel), I was absolutely flying by the seat of my pants. As I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, I’m just not a planner by nature. I get ideas, and I write them. That’s pretty much my process. But this year I’m (*gasp*) changing it up a bit. As most of you know, I’m working a camp job in Northern Alberta. That means that for 14 of the days of November I’ll be on camp, working 12 hour days and spending over an hour a day on the bus. Then I also have to work in time to eat breakfast and supper while at camp, plus things like doing my laundry and showering. All in all I have about an hour a day to myself that can be used for writing. From experience I know that I am capable of writing a lot of words in an hour, but only if I already know what I’m going to write. If I have any writer’s block at all, or if I’m unsure where the next scene is going, all is lost. I can spend half a day on the computer only to pluck out a couple hundred words, rather than the 1667 I need to write each day in order to win.

One method of rectifying this issue would be to write as much as I can during the other 16 days, attempting to bolster my word count on the days I’m not working. This would be an excellent plan if not for a couple of things…I call them Jason and Adrianna. See, I spend two weeks at a time away from my husband and daughter, so it’s not likely that I’m going to spend my two weeks with them holed away, writing. In fact, I may actually get less writing done when I’m home than when I’m at work.

So this is my plan…to become a planner (*cue gasping, strangled noises*). Over the next five days, when I’m not doing housework or playing with the baby, I’m going to be planning my novel. It’s going to be a rewrite (remember what I said about being a rebel?) but the original was never properly planned either and has gone off in a dozen different directions, so I think this is going to be a good thing. I’m going to use an idea I found online and scribble out as many details as I can on my characters, flesh out my ideas for particular people and places that are important, and all in all try to figure out exactly where the story is going before I start writing it. As this is going to be a monumental effort on my part, I’ll share some of it on this blog as I’m working on it. Look forward to seeing my brain shrivel like a dried out plum. 🙂

The Cure for What Ailes Ya

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

13. Overcoming writer’s block

Truly one of the most frustrating parts of writing. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it’s like your brain just turns off and nothing will come out. Or what does come out is complete, unadulterated crap. Either way, it can leave you feeling pretty useless.

My personal cure for writer’s block sounds a little dumb, but I swear it works…write fan fiction. No really! Fan fiction is great for writer’s block because the world, the characters, and all the important information is already created for you. All that’s left is to make something happen with all that information. Even better, take something that exists as other-than-written media (like tv shows, video games, etc) and write it out in novel form. It can be very interesting to use your imagination to flesh out visual media by writing it out in novel form, and it really gets the creative juices flowing. Writing a page or two of my Final Fantasy fan fiction (which is just a novelized telling of Final Fantasy III/VI) always gets me ready and able to move back to something original. 🙂