Everybody Has Talent, But Ability Takes Hard Work
-Michael Jordon
Every writer – actually, every human – suffers blocks. You are going along, everything is great, then something comes along that knocks you off balance. This is life. The question is not how to avoid it; you are going to experience days like this and there is no way to avoid it every time.
How do we get past it? How do we ensure that one day being blocked does not turn into a week? A month? Years? This is a question I’ve had to answer a hundred times or more in my own life, to the point where writer’s block has become the thing I am constantly working to overcome. And these are the tricks that work best.
Practice
Yes. Practice. This goes for anything in your life that you want to do well. Getting in that zone where you can let go of yourself and just flow requires knowing how to open the door.
There was a time in my life where I questioned the value of practice writing. Shouldn’t I be spending my time writing something I could sell? Shouldn’t everything I wrote have some value? Was I even a writer if most of what I wrote was aimless babbling in a notebook? This is the curse of being creative. There is no-one to tell you that not every single thing you do has to be a public property. Not everything you write, draw, or build is for anyone else. When people ask what you are working on, they expect to hear about your next book or painting or symphony. They do not want to hear that you spend an hour every morning just writing about nothing in particular.
Here’s the thing. Would it surprise you to learn that Michael Jordon spent more time in practice than he ever did playing for the public? What about your favorite quarterback? Think he just goes out on the field and wings it? Actors have rehearsals. So do bands. Practice is an integral part of all these careers. And so it is that writers need practice too.
I got to a point in my life where I would write maybe two days a week. Sometimes less. I could never quite let it go, but I couldn’t seem to get myself to the page, either. I knew something had to change. Either I had to let go of writing entirely or I had to come up with something that would let me write more regular.
In the beginning, that was my only intent. I let go of the idea that I needed to be writing books. I stopped pressuring myself to write meaningful, sellable product. Instead, I told myself that I just needed to get back to that place where I could write every single day without argument. Once it was part of my routine, I could move to the next step. At that moment, I didn’t even know what the next step was and I didn’t care. All I wanted was to stop feeling like a failure when someone asked me when I wrote last.
Writers spend more time wishing they were writing or planning to write than they actually do writing. If you’ve been around the writing groups on Facebook, you have seen that meme and, if you are like me, you laughed at it while feeling a sinking in the pit of your stomach; why is it so hard just to sit down and write.
The answer is practice. Not to write better, exactly. What you are really practicing when you show up to write every day is facing off with resistance.
This is not my idea, full disclosure. This came from one of the many, many books and blogs I read in an attempt to regain my writing balance. The Artist’s Way is a book I suggest to everyone who is feeling that sense of being totally lost and not sure how to get back.
So here’s the deal. I get up extra early every morning. Save the ‘I’m not a morning person’ answer. I like to sleep in. But I like writing more. I want to write. I want to face resistance and win so that when it comes to writing actual books, I have the ability to keep going even when I want to quit. So I get up. The science behind this is sound; in the morning, especially in the first half hour or so after waking up, you are unguarded. The little voice that whines about not wanting to do this or that or finding time later is not fully active.
Second, when you get up specifically to write, there is no ‘I’ll do it later’; this is the whole reason for getting up early. I make my coffee, feed my dogs and let them out, then sit down at my desk with a notebook and pen. I write as fast as I can and the deal I made with myself is that it does not matter what I write, only that I get three whole pages every single morning. I have been doing that for long enough that I can’t actually remember what it was like not to write in the morning.
I will not lie to you and tell you that there aren’t mornings when I want to just roll over and do it later. But every morning I ask myself two questions: Am I ready to give up writing completely? Do I really want to spoil this streak? Then I get my butt up out of bed and, before it is time for me to leave for work, I have written those three pages. Even if all I could think to write was ‘I don’t know what to write’.
The Bad Days
They happen. I will never tell you that every day is going to be golden. I used to beat myself up over them. I used to hit that wall in the middle of a story or book and think ‘Who do I even think that I am kidding? I’m no writer’. These days, I’m taking a different track. I’ve noticed that all writers get to this place. No matter who they are or what they write, all of us have days of feeling like we are never going to write the way we want to. Letting go of that, accepting those bad days as just a passing mood, has kept me from doing what I normally do, which is throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble.
If you are expecting this to be a walk in the park every day, then you are still either very young or you have never seen the wall. That is good and I hope you can keep going. For the rest of us, it is a question of mindset.
It is so easy to believe, when we hit a block, that it will always be there. It feels hopeless. In running, we call this hitting the wall. It is that moment when it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere, there is just too far to go and you don’t have any gas left in the tank. It is an illusion almost every single time. The only way past the wall is through. If you stop and turn around, the wall will only be there waiting the next time you run. If you let it beat you, it will keep beating you. But this is only in your mind. You decide the wall is insurmountable, and so it is. What you believe you make true.
In writing, this equates to putting down the pen (or laptop) and walking away, hoping that, tomorrow, it will be okay again. Sometimes it is, but that doesn’t mean the wall is gone. It just means the next time you have to face it, it is that much harder to overcome because now you are scared of it. Resistance is part of creativity. Is part of the job and it is never not going to be there in some form.
What do you do about it? How do you change your mindset when it feels so certain that you are just kidding yourself?
Start with a deep breath. Accept that these days are going to happen because they happen to every single person on earth in some form or another. Then close your eyes and visualize. Don’t picture a best selling novel – at least not at first. Just visualize finishing your writing for the day. Try to feel how you will feel once you’ve finished your pages. Feel the triumph of winning out against the gremlins and continuing. Feel how it would be if you put your pen to the page once more and everything just flowed out of you. Don’t even worry if it is great or if it has meaning; practice is not about showing off, it is about getting your muscles to remember how to do something. Visualize the final word or sentence and standing up, wholly accomplished because you not only wrote, but you walked right through that imaginary wall and kept going. Let yourself get excited about this. Really embrace it. Once you are smiling and feeling truly thrilled, open your eyes and just start writing.
I like to use music in these situations. I will listen to Eminem or shamanic drumming because it is the beat that matters more than anything. I will start letting random words get written. If I am listening to something with lyrics, I’ll riff off those. The most important part of this exercise isn’t what you write. It is about letting yourself get in a groove, to feel the rhythm and really let it take you over. I will loosen my grip on what I want and become wholly unattached to the outcome; all that matters is that I am writing, not what I’m writing.
Think of this like a singer doing scales to warm up their vocal cords. At first, every note sounds a little flat. Off key. But, as the singer continues, working over old material, focusing on the notes rather than the content of a song, they become stronger. The same can be said of writing. There is a place I go when I am writing hot. I am no longer thinking about the story, it is just flowing through me as I watch (sometimes hear) it play out in my head. Getting here was easy for me in the beginning, but now I have to put myself into that mindset and that requires plenty of practice.
New Spaces
Finally, beating writer’s block may require a change of venue. At home, the dishes are waiting to be washed. You need to vacuum. Your kid can’t remember where he left his phone. There are things that need to be done and sitting down to write feels like stealing time. So leave.
I am lucky enough to still have a Barnes and Nobles nearby. There is a Starbucks (that isn’t really like Starbucks) inside and all the baristas know me by my first name. They know that, in winter, I am going to order a hot chocolate (do NOT hold the whipped cream) and, in summer, a strawberry cheesecake frappe with a shot of chocolate (highly recommend). Then I sit down and I get to work.
Sometimes, just the shock of someplace new is enough. I have to be careful; the siren song of books will sometimes sidetrack me at the door and this becomes me finding something better to do than write. If I am still hesitating to write, still fighting for words, I do something that always makes me feel a little strange (I was taught not to eavesdrop) and start listening to the conversations around me. Listening and writing the things that catch at my attention. Or I will just write about the people I see, trying to describe them.
The point of this is to notice something that triggers me. It isn’t enough to write about someone’s green coat. I try to remember every one I have ever known who wore a green coat. If I have a memory of a green coat I owned, I chase that. I don’t try to get fancy. I don’t pull out my inner thesaurus. I write in simple sentences. While doing this, I remind myself that I intend to write simple. I’m doing a Hemingway practice and trying to find the most plain way to write it. This isn’t about poetry. This is just scales. One of my own practices is below.
There is a man in a green coat. It is puffy and the color of the shamrock Notre Dame has on their logo. I once had a green coat that wasn’t really mine. It belonged to my father in law when he was in the military and it was not such a bright green, but a dusty, darker color they used to call olive. He was a field medic and his last name was stitched on the left breast. I was wearing the day my boyfriend and I decided to get in the car and drive to St. Louis. We were in Union station and I wanted to feed the fish. They had dispensers that gave out a handful of dog food for a quarter and you could throw it into the pond. There were so many pigeons, though and I started feeding them instead. When I didn’t give the food fast enough, one of the pigeons flew up to perch on my hand and each from my palm. My ex husband, only my boyfriend, then, paused to get a picture of me, wholly delighted, with this pigeon perched upon my hand as though he was a pet.
When I look at that picture now, I remember that my ex husband and I used to be friends and we used to be in love. I remember that I left that green coat in the closet when I left because it was never really mine. I miss the coat more than I miss the man, but thinking of that moment makes me miss the people we used to be, before we grew up. It reminds me of the pigeons I helped raise when I was younger and how they would fly away every fall then return in the spring, the flock growing until… what? I don’t remember what happened to those pigeons and anyone I might ask is gone.
This is an example of the type of writing I use to get myself warmed up. It is not great writing. Perhaps it isn’t even good writing. But that does not matter. All that matters is that I wrote something, connected to it, and got warm.
Any athlete will tell you that getting warmed up is sometimes easy and then there are days when you just never really loosen up. Writing is like this. This is why it is so important to make writing an every day thing; what makes you a writer is the writing. Doing it every day is what makes you better.
This may not be true for everyone. Anne Rice once addressed this by saying that she tried writing every day and it actually felt like it hurt her writing. However, if you aren’t the author of one of the biggest vampire series to ever hit the shelves, you would probably do well to try and pick up that pen every single day. While it may have messed with the queen’s flow, the point is she knew how her writing worked. She wasn’t blocked when she wasn’t writing. She wasn’t avoiding her writing. She was simply waiting for her story to ripen. If that works for you, wonderful. But, if you are reading this post, I’m going to go ahead and assume you are seeking help to get you past a bad time in your own writing. I could pat you gently on the head and tell you this will pass without any effort on your part. But I don’t want to lie to you. Getting past the wall, illusion or not, is work. If you want to write, you have to do that work.
Nobody else can do this for you. Get up early. Write. Stop promising you will do it tomorrow. Get one of those daily planners and note every single day that you’ve done your morning pages. See how long you can go before you break your streak. Don’t count the days for a while. Just see how long you can do this. If you want it bad enough, you will get up out of bed, you will do this thing. I promise, do it long enough, and it will be worth it.