Killing the Monster that is Writer's Block with Love

Writing when not being able to write.

When writing, giving up is often a thought that follows us around, it’s only when you have truly fallen in love with a story that you’re willing to put in all that effort into getting it to near perfection. So here’s the hard part, falling in love.

Falling in love with your story; it’s one of those things that can’t be taught, it happens, it happened to me with my current story and others in the past, and it will happen to you with whatever you are writing at the moment, if you give your story a chance.

I think that’s the trick; giving your story a chance not pushing it away because it’s a little weird, it doesn't make sense or it’s a little out of the ordinary and you’re not sure about it.

Make it make sense, you’re the writer, you give life to the story, change it if you wish and as you wish, don’t let others talk you out of writing it and most importantly don’t let yourself talk you out of it, you won’t believe how common that is.

Writing is hard work; lots of people don’t realize this, if writing were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not the actual writing part that is difficult, anybody can write, it’s making the characters come to life, that’s the hard work. But once those characters are alive in your mind they begin to influence your writing and although they can be annoying, you will grow to love them and miss their presence when they shut up during writer’s block.

That’s what writer’s block is after all, when your imaginary characters won’t speak to you.

I've always found writer’s block rather strange as it’s only writer’s that get it, hence the name ‘Writer’s block’. You don’t hear people get ‘editor’s block’ or ‘teacher’s block’ or any other type of block; it’s just us writers that get this.

Because of this many have gone on to say that writer’s block is mythical, that it’s something we writer’s come up with, a creative excuse for being lazy. But, from someone who has experienced it on numerous occasions, it is most certainly not made up.

However, I'm not sure writer’s block is the right name.  Personally I feel writer’s block happens when you fall out of love with your story and therefore have no motivation to write it, what motivated you earlier; your love for the story is now gone, what remains is that little thought at the back of your head that tells you to write, the remains of your love.

This past week I've had writer’s block, it’s been an increasingly frustrating experience because this time it’s a little different; I have an outline. I know exactly what I'm meant to be writing but I haven’t been able to get the words down. Instead, I've been talking about writing, reading about writing and doing everything but writing.  

But I've succeeded in driving it away, for the meantime anyway. I managed to find a way to reawaken the characters within me and to once again fall in love with my story, because your love for your story is what makes you want to write.

Writing is still a bit difficult at the moment; I'm onto my third draft which means the plot is pretty solid. At this stage it’s only the way I present the story and perhaps the style in which I present it that is changing so I’m focusing more on what I write; quality over quantity.

It’s strange writing so slowly, usually in a weekend like this I’d get 10,000 words written, purely because I find myself so absorbed in my writing the time just flies and before I know it my word count has doubled. 

But now I find it difficult to write 1,000 words a night, I find myself carefully mulling over my word choice, ‘is this the right word? Maybe I should check the thesaurus and get something else, something more suitable.’

Maybe my English teachers are right, authors do chose their words carefully, or maybe it’s just me, desperately trying to sound professional, like a ‘real writer’ although I have begun to convince myself that there is no such thing as a ‘real writer’.

Regardless of this I am proud of what I have so far written; the words flow and when I go to read the sentences aloud there are only a few changes to be made, possibly a few mistakes that snuck in whilst I was flipping through my thesaurus.

If you’re suffering from writer’s block try to fall in love with your stories and your characters once more. Invite them back into your mind, place them into funny or strange situations and watch their reactions, remember your plot and most importantly remember why you wanted to write that story.

Fall in love, the writing will follow.

Janna