Dealing with Writing Hangovers

No, not the alcoholic sort - tho those happen to writers too I've heard - but writing ones.  This is what happens:  you start writing, your character needs a problem/career/best friend so you give them one and carry on.  

Much, much later on, and you're stuck.  The plot can't move on ahead or it's set off in more directions than a catherine wheel.  The reason behind your plot block is the problem/career/best friend - they don't fit comfortably with the current situation.  So you puzzle away, trying desperately to work out how you can get round the situation but not succeeding.  

You have a hangover!  Something you randomly chose in the past is now affecting your writing in the present.   

I've just been stuck in hangover hell, having made a character married.  This meant that further down the plot line he had to have a wife in tow. This wife was causing me problems - it wasn't plausible that she'd turn up all of a sudden, but she existed so neither was it plausible that she wasn't around.  Then - ping! Light bulb moment.  Just because the character was married in the first draft didn't mean he had to be married in the second, especially as I'd rewritten him pretty much from scratch.  The wife could go.  End of problem.  

Sometimes it's really hard to spot hangovers.  You get stuck in a particular way of thinking and it's hard to challenge yourself and ask, Why can't X do Y?  Why does Z have to be female?  Why can't A do that?  Why does B have to be a teacher?  Why does C have to be tall? Why can't D be unable to swim?

In A Single to Rome I struggled through the first draft with lots of hangovers and a hefty headache to match.  Then I realised that Teresa was doing two plot functions and could become Teresa and another character - Olivia.  Judith didn't have to be female, and became Bob (who hooked up with the newly created Olivia).  Natalie's original job got the chop and she became a lawyer, which both raised the stakes and solved a couple of plot problems.  

So if you get stuck, check that it's not because of some hangover from the past.  It may have been the answer to a problem then, but that doesn't mean it still is now.  Challenge your previous decisions and check you haven't got a writing hangover.  

And if you have, the solution is straightforward. You wrote it: you can delete it.  It's as simple as that.

What's Stopping You From Writing?

Sometimes writer's block is more serious than the usual reluctance to get going. What's stopping you from writing?

1. Fear of not living up to expectations.

This affects published writers - will my next book be as good? - and the unpublished - I've talked about my book for so long, it'll never be as good as everyone expects. I think you have to ask yourself what the alternative is to not writing a book. What would happen if you walked away from it? Sometimes looking at the alternative makes you less afraid of failure, whether it's because actually, the alternative isn't so bad or because you realise that all you really really want to do is write.

2. Fear of the internal editor

A lot of us have an internal editor who sits on our shoulder and tells us what we're doing is worthless rubbish. Sometimes the voice of the internal editor may be that of a former teacher or a parent. Try to visualise your internal editor. Then tell them to go away. Explain that you're busy writing and part of the process of writing is to write rubbish because we can edit it later. Writers often call the first draft the dirty draft. Accepting that your first (second, third...) draft is going to be rubbish is part of the writing process.

3. Fear of Rejection

This is a pretty obvious one. No one likes getting rejected. No one looks for it. And sometimes it hurts so much that we'd rather not expose ourselves to the risk that we might get rejected. So we don't write. That means our dreams of being a writer are safe. But...if we don't write, we're not writers.

Edison said in an interview: "after we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn't be done that way, and that we could have to try some other way."

Think of writing as statistics. There are X number of publishers out there. At least one of them will publish you, but it may not be obvious which one. So you have to send out to lots of them before you get the right one - but, each time you get rejected, you're closer to finding the right one for you.

4. Fear of Success

A friend of mine confessed that she doesn't send her work out because she feels she couldn't cope if it was accepted - they'd demand another book for starters. So you're back to the fear of demands being made of you, and the fear of expectations. In fact, you don't have to write another book, you may well be offered a one book deal. But the one thing you can guarantee is that if you don't write it and send it out, you'll be offered nothing at all.

5. Wrong time, wrong place

I made lots of attempts at writing a novel and short stories in my 20s. None of them worked. In hindsight, I don't think I had anything that I really wanted to say. Later, when I started writing again some fifteen years later, the words flowed. This time I had things to say and was prepared to learn how to say them.

I've had times since when I've been completely unproductive as a writer. They're always associated with other things going on in my life such as the time I took on a job I loathed or my father's sudden illness and death. There's nothing you can do about this except trust that time will bring back the desire to write. Be kind to yourself.

5 Ways to Beat Writer's Block

These techniques are good if you need a bit of a kick start to get going.

1. Write for ten minutes about anything. Use an egg timer to time yourself if you like, but you'll probably get more written if you don't - getting going is usually the problem, not keeping going.

2. Give yourself permission to write rubbish. Brilliant writing in your head is worth less than the grottiest bit of writing on the page. Remember, you can always make it better later - that's what editing is for.

3. Don't write chronologically. If you're getting stuck on a particular scene then jump to a scene you do fancy writing. There are no extra points for writing in a particular order, all that matters is the finished product.

4. Close your eyes and visualise the scene. Think of the details - the location, the weather, the people. Then describe the scene, using the 5 senses. Hopefully you'll get started and then keep going. And if you can't keep going, then you've got some useful description that you'll probably be able to use anyway.

5. Team up with a friend and arrange to swap word counts on a daily or weekly basis. Even better, be part of a group where you have to announce your word count. It's amazing how the prospect of confessing to not having written will inspire you.

Most of the time getting over writer's block is a question of overcoming inertia; once you get going you can't stop writing. I'll look at more serious blocks tomorrow.

Writer's Block

It's the great writing fear, writer's block. The image is of the writer hunched over their desk, weeping into the keyboard as their hands lie idle, the imagination barren. I think writer's block is about fear: fear that it won't be perfect, fear that it won't get published, fear that someone might read it and see what you're really like. Here are some ideas for getting over block...

1. Write some description. Where is your viewpoint character now - what can they see, hear, touch? What are they wearing? Go into as much detail as you can. It doesn't have to fit into the plot, it's enough that you're writing, being able to use it at some point will be a bonus.

2. Don't get hung up on writing chronologically. If you fancy writing a scene near the end, do it and don't worry about the fact you haven't set it up properly. You can always go back and do that another time.

3. If you're finding a scene difficult to write, jump over it. Make a few notes - Jess buys a motorbike but her credit card is refused - and then carry on. The problem with the scene will almost certainly resolve itself later - perhaps Jess needs a car, not a motorbike.

4. Tell yourself you're just going to write for ten minutes about anything, and that's your quota. If you really can't think of anything to write about, start with the phrase 'I remember when...' and take it from there.

5. Stuck for a story line? Choose a fairy tale or nursery story. Re-write it with a contemporary feel or give it a twist - make the Big Bad Wolf the hero. Shakespeare was notorious for nicking plots from other writers and if it's good enough for Shakespeare...

Generally I think the best thing is to relax and accept that we all have off days and that creativity doesn't flow from some convenient tap that can be turned off and on at will. On the other hand, don't use this as an excuse for sidling out of writing all together as one day will slip into another and a month will go by without you writing a word. The best solution for writer's block is to develop a writing habit.