Rage From the Edge

A Brief Note On Writer's Block

I am one of those characters who think that writer’s block is a myth. There is no reason for a writer not to write. They can sit down with a pen or a word possessor and type out the word “blah” for fifty-nine pages, I don’t care. What they really mean when they say “writer’s block” is that they don’t have any fresh ideas. Well, guess what? This little article is when I run out of fresh ideas. See? I don’t have writer’s block…after all, I am writing here aren’t I?

I once took a creative writing class at a local university. The old lady who taught the class told us that we should have warm-up exercises for when the mood to write struck us. Nobody expects to be André Aggasi the first time they step on a tennis court do they? Of course they don’t! She said. It took old André years and years of practice to get where he is today.

This was years ago of course, and she had no idea of what might become of André, but the gist of her comments are true. I run into people all the time who say they want to write, they just don’t know how or don’t know what to do when they get in front of a computer screen. They all expect to be experts at writing without even thinking about what a writer does. Here is what I tell them: type whatever comes into your head. Do that for a while and see what you come up with. No, it doesn’t need to be the great American novel; I doesn’t have to be good at all. It just has to be.

Keep at it. Don’t just quit because the first time you tried to write something it didn’t meet your standards. Remember, you are in training here, you aren’t playing in the Super Bowl. That might come later, if you have worked hard enough. But don’t you bet the farm on that. Just be happy that you are writing something and you are exercising your “writing muscles.”

Here is where the hard part comes in. Those writing muscles need to be exercised every day. That means you have to sit down and write in an out of the way place. No kids howling in your ear, no television on…that stuff can come later (if it comes at all) when you have the writer’s equivalent of six-pack abs. Every day means every day. I don’t care if you feel like shit because you got drunk the night before and you threw up in the wastebasket by the side of the bed…you have to write. After you have figured out a place and time to set aside for writing, you have to decide on an amount of time. Before, I said “little while” when describing how long you should write for. I don’t think that what I said is good advice. Here is some better time advice for writers:

Write for twenty minutes the first time you sit down to do it. That means you don’t stop for anything and you don’t sit there and stare at the lines on the paper or the cursor on your screen. What that means is that you have to keep your fingers moving the entire time you are there. It sounds hard, and it will be hard first…but trust me, you will get the hang of it in almost no time. If a boob like me can force himself to write like I do, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Work at the twenty-minute level for a week or two. After that, you are going to want to increase the amount of time you use for your training. I suggest making it thirty minutes and then increase you time every few weeks after that. Remember, this isn’t about quality, it is about quantity. Once you have thrown off the shackles of “writer’s block” and get your game face on, you should be able to tackle harder things like making sense and making stories.