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How To Write a Book Through Writer's Block

I've never suffered with writer's block per se. I've experienced blank spots in scenes or indecision about which way a chapter should go or the more frequent situation where I don't know where my characters are taking me and I gamely go along in faith. I have two questions that can help you diagnose what may be blocking you:

Are you a type-A personality? 

    The good news is, you're a powerful person, but the controlling aspect of your superpower can lead you to try to direct or coral a process that generally can't be corralled or directed with any real accuracy. *

Are you trying to write a hit?

    If your creative process is aimed at making money, that pressure heaped on your muse may be crushing the life out of it.

I ask people who are complaining of blockage why they want to write. If they can answer that they have a great story that they're struggling to get written, I ask them to try to lighten up. Try to have fun with the process. Don't take it too seriously because judgment and self-criticism can creep in and paralyze you. 

Write the parts of the story that are most fully formed. Then jot down ideas of how to fill in the unwritten parts. Try different ways to get to your plot points. Write from different points of view (POVs). Jot down dossiers on your characters to flesh them out more fully and they'll talk to you with louder voices.

One of my characters opened a shelter for battered women and my editor asked me to write three intimate scenes of the women going about their business in the shelter. I loved those scenes and got to know the residents and place quite well. Then, my editor, had me cut those scenes (yes, big girl panties for that one!). They didn't move the plot forward, that exercise had been designed to get me inside the shelter and all my subsequent shelter scenes had an authenticity that had been lacking because it had been a concept, not a familiar place.

Writing isn't a march, it's a dance. Shall we?


-- Anna Erikssön Bendewald 

*Well, okay, those seasoned writer unicorns that have honed their formula for churning out books with staggering regularity, have somehow directed and corralled their creative process into a fine oiled machine. Most writers look upon unicorns with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Take Stephen King's 200 short stories and 62 novels currently published. Unicorn. Awe.








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