On Writer's Block

My thoughts on why we tend not to write and get stuck.

 

On Writer's Block

Nearly everyone who has attempted to write something at some point in their lives has had this happen to them. You stare at a blank page and wonder what the first words should be or how it should start. You think to yourself that if you don't write the right words in the right way, your writing will end up looking mediocre or not fully conveying the message that you have envisioned. Whatever the reason might be, sometimes as writers we are just not able to put any words down on the page.

Often, I've found that this hesitation stems from the belief that whatever we end up writing should be as close to the end product as possible, a notion that I think couldn’t be farther from the truth. That's not at all how good writing is done. When we are crafting a draft, it is the equivalent of an artist drawing a rough sketch in a sketchbook. You will not stop there in your creative process. You will simply use it like clay, as the foundation or the “base” for what will come later. You almost always want to work on a second or even third draft before you are ready to show the world your work.

One of the books I read last year was Barbara Baig’s How to be a Writer. It taught me several important concepts about writing, but here are three of the ones that I believe can help someone who is stuck in that hesitant head space:

         #1. Never judge your first draft against someone’s finished work. We tend to do this whenever we read something from another author that we like. It’s like comparing your Level 1 character in a video game to someone’s Level 99 character. It probably took them years to get to that skill level, but most of us don’t see the amount of painstaking effort that it took to get there. We just see the end result of all that hard work and then wonder how they make it look so easy. So don't do it! Remember that all your first draft really is for you as a writer is a thing to play around with. You can polish it and work at it until the rough parts are out of the way and you are left with diamonds.

         #2. Writing is all about communication. Have something to say to your readers. Otherwise, you’re just writing to write with no central topic or idea to convey. You should have a clear goal in mind before you even start writing. Whatever it is you want to say, make sure that you've thought about it a little before opening that blank page. What is it that you want to put into the heads of others? Always remember that it's easier to write from abundance than it is to write from scarcity. If you have nothing to say, why write?

         #3. Writing is not a talent or some gift given at birth. It is a skill that can be developed over time, just like any other skill. Learning to write is very much akin to learning how to draw or learning how to play a musical instrument. You can develop these skills if you dedicate enough time and effort to improve them. You may not be the next Shakespeare, but you can certainly become decent enough to craft a compelling narrative if you give it enough time.

Through trial and error, you can learn what works best for you and your writing style. I've come to realize that some things in the writing craft are more important to me than others. For example, picking the most eloquent word to use for a sentence is not as necessary for me as it is for other writers. Sure, I can sit there and try and find the perfect phrase or terminology to use for something I'm writing, but I tend to just go with what simply gets the message across quickly. For example, in a short story I was writing the other day, I was going to use the word erudite to describe a person who was very knowledgeable about a particular subject—but savvy works just as well and it's easier to digest. As a writer, you shouldn’t feel the need to reach for the thesaurus every time you are crafting a sentence. Don't fall into the trap of wanting to sound more intelligent by forcing some articulate word soup on your page. The end goal should be to communicate your idea in a way that can be easily understood and absorbed clearly. That’s all writing really is at the end of the day. Communication.

I find that books that overuse words like that (flowery, overly ornate synonyms) end up boring me after a while. I understand that some people might enjoy that kind of prose, but I am not one of them. I want to immerse myself in the story and forget that the words are even there. I want to build a mental picture in my head of what’s happening in the book, not have to stop myself and search some word on Google just to figure out what the author was trying to say. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I simply need to expand my vernacular. Either way, I tend to like books that just get a thought across quickly and clearly. This might be why I tend to write my own stories in that same fashion.

Another important concept I learned thanks to Barbara Baig's book is that writing is never done in isolation, meaning that it builds upon other skill sets. It’s not enough to be good at stringing words together, you also need to be able to collect material about what you want to talk about. If you're a good enough researcher, you can find material out there that will help you come up with things to say. We’ve all done this for essays at school, but this is also important (if not more important) for creative writing as well. If you’re writing a science fiction novel about human colonists exploring another planet, for example, you may want to investigate what kind of planets NASA has discovered using telescopes, or how the human body might react to different environments in space. This will help your mind come up with things to show your readers.

Oh, and going back to first drafts for a moment, no one likes their first draft. If you hate yours, then you're in good company. Ernest Hemingway famously once said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” And you know what? He was right! You shouldn’t stop yourself from writing something new just because you’re afraid that it might turn out to be garbage. That’s fine! You should expect garbage the first time you write anything. It is very unlikely that anyone, even the greatest writer in the world, will be able to produce pure gold every single time they sit down to write a first draft. So why should you?

Stop thinking about it. Start writing.

The last thing I will say is that the less time you devote to making every word as perfect as you can in your writing, the more time you will have to build something on your page to play with later. We should be going for quantity in our first drafts, not quality. The quality can come after, when the majority of our content has been dumped on the canvas and we have actual words to play around with. I will leave you all with this quote from Jodi Picoult, winner of 13 book awards and author of 28 books:

         “You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

Thanks for reading.