When you get Stuck

As with previous articles in this series, “Writer’s Block” is one of the most common topics to come up in writing discussions. There is a lot of conflicting advice about how to deal with it.

Take a break. Power through it. You can’t do both, so how do you know which you should do? Some writers say there is no such thing as writer’s block, and others swear it’s a perpetual curse. It can’t be both!

Except, actually, it can.

The key thing to understand about writer’s block is that it is not a root cause. It is a symptom. The only thing the phrase “I have writer’s block” tells you is that something is wrong. It doesn’t tell you what is wrong, much less how to fix it. For-example, if Covid or depression are a illness, lethargy and exhaustion are symptoms of that illness. Writer’s block is not analogous to the illness itself; it is a symptom.

The difficulty in “diagnosing” the underlying root cause is that writer’s block can be caused by a vast collection of different problems. The “treatment” for those underlying problems is different, depending on exactly what they are, and how they affect your writing in the current moment.

This article discusses only a few of the potential causes and their possible solutions, but hopefully it is enough to help you identify which one is affecting you today.

External Problems

Maybe you’re hungry, or sleepy or in need of exercise. Maybe you have the aforementioned Covid or depression or some other physical illness. When the root problem that needs addressing is your own body and mind, then “power through it” is 100% the wrong advice.

And yet, so is “take a break”, unless it is followed by an “and”! “Take a break and get yourself something to eat,” or “take a break and go for a walk,” or “take a few days off, drink lots of fluid and get a lot of rest.” Three totally different solutions to (more than) three totally different problems, all of which manifest as “writer’s block”.

If you pick the wrong solution (e.g. I tend to choose eating a chocolate bar when what I really need is a bit of fresh air and some exercise), you won’t “cure” your writer’s block.

Identifying the root cause is rarely easy. Or rather, when it is easy, we simply address the problem instead of claiming we have writer’s block! It can be helpful to rely on experimentation. “Go for a walk,” is oft-given advice for addressing writer’s block, but how long of a walk is necessary or sufficient? If you walk for eight hours, it’s unlikely you’ll have the time OR the energy to write anything when you get back! So try going for a 5 minute walk one time, mark down how you feel afterwards, and another time, try a 1 hour walk.

It can be helpful to keep a writer’s block journal. When your story just isn’t coming, write down how you currently feel, a couple hypothesis for why you feel that way, and document which solution you’re going to try. Here’s an example entry:

todays’ date: I’m currently working on scene “My scene” in my current novel “My Awesome Book”. The writing just isn’t coming today. I wonder why. I know what I want to write, I just don’t feel like writing it. I feel kind of sleepy or maybe light headed. I really don’t think I’m up for a walk, and I got a lot of exercise walking the dog this morning. She just wouldn’t quit! I might be coming down with something, but it doesn’t feel like a flu. Perhaps I need some food. Hmmm… food does feel like a good idea. Last time I felt like this I ate a salad and it didn’t seem to help. So maybe I need something with a little more substance to it. I haven’t had much protein today. Maybe I need a protein shake. Yeah, that’s what I’ll try this time.

If it works for you, this process can be super beneficial. Not only does it help with self-awareness and tracking hypothesis about what works or doesn’t work for you, but it also gets you writing. Sure it’s not writing on your novel, but a few paragraphs like that is proof that you can write.

Habitual Problems

Sometimes writer’s block is a symptom of some habit that exists in your writing process. If you tend to be a procrastinator, “I have writer’s block” can be a synonym for “I am procrastinating.” However, as the word “synonym” implies, procrastination is also a symptom of some underlying root cause. Procrastination might be rooted in perfectionism (For those interested, I wrote an article on my personal blog about dealing with perfectionism several years ago).

Or it might be a fear of failure (ok, maybe that’s just another form of perfectionism), or even just a fear of being finished. You’ve been working with these characters for so many pages; you don’t want to abandon them! It can also be a symptom of something being wrong with the story, as discussed in the next section. In these cases, “power through it” can be better advice than for other situtations. As I discussed in Pantsing vs Plotting, it can (sometimes) be more important to finish a story than it is to finish a good story. If you don’t know how to do it well, do it poorly!

Another common issue, especially in secondary world genres, is the so-called “world builder’s disease.” If you are spending more time perfecting parts of your world than actually setting a story in that world, you aren’t furthering a goal of completing a novel. You might be furthering other meaningful goals, so it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if the thing you really want is to finish your novel, you have to set the world aside and write the story.

Tip: If you use Fablehenge, check the statistics tab, and make sure your “World building words” don’t dwarf your “published words”.

Or maybe there’s simply something you would rather be doing. Personally, this is my most frequent blocker. I love writing fiction, but I love a lot of things as well, including writing non-fiction (my latest nonfiction book set my current story back by six months), writing software (I work on Fablehenge for more often than I work in Fablehenge), and woodworking. When I’m just not feeling my book, it is all-too-easy to work on something else.

This can be a problem if I mix it it with one common piece of advice for “curing” writer’s block: write something else. I can always write something else. That doesn’t help me finish a story. I’m working on this article right now, after all. Not finishing a story. I recently wrote 50,000 words across 16 articles for my personal blog. I did it in two weeks. If only I had put that into my fiction, my current story would be 70% finished instead of 20%!

But for other situations, the “write something else” suggestion can be exactly what you need to do. Getting into the habit of writing something is an important step on the trail to developing a habit of writing the right thing. And writing “the wrong thing” is, by far, the best way to improve your skills as a writer. And maybe even give you something you can revise into “the right thing.”

In a nutshell, if “write something else” encourages you to write words that you would not have written at all, it is good advice, but if it interferes with writing the words you meant to write, it isn’t the best advice for the current situation.

Problems with the Writing

Sometimes, your brain knows that what you are about to write is not what the story needs, and it jumps out in front of you like a deer at dusk. You’re too busy slamming on the brakes to actually diagnose the problem in the story, or even recognize that there is one. So you claim “writer’s block.”

This can be a really insidious problem, especially for newer writers. Writers are usually able to acquire the “I can tell there is a problem here” skill long before they learn the “I know what the problem is” skill, let alone “I know how to fix it.”

Often, the best advice for this situation is the good old “power through it and write anyway.” You will not be able to write the right words until you get the wrong words out first. Get it over with. In fact, this is the last thing I did on my current story. There is a scene that my (semblance of an) outline is pretty sure needs to happen, but I still don’t know how to make it happen in an engaging way. So I wrote a filler scene that gets my characters where I need them to be, and left a to-do in Fablehenge to revisit it when I understand the story better.

On the one hand, at least I wrote that scene. I know it’s bad. I know I’m going to delete or rewrite it. But I got through it and now I can continue with the story, writing the parts that depend on that scene.

The problem is… that was two months ago. sigh

To be clear, I’m not saying that powering through it was the wrong solution; I had some legitimate stuff come up that caused me to consciously put the story on hold for a while, including finishing my non-fiction book. I will get back to the story, and the fact that this scene is in there will not prevent my from finishing it.

That said, powering through it is not the only solution to this situation. You could also just skip ahead. Nobody ever said you have to write a story in order from beginning to end. This revelation absolutely blew my (very linear) mind when I realized it. I could have left that scene blank and just written some other part of the book instead.

Those solutions (might) work when the problem is with the content you are about to write. However, sometimes “writer’s block” is caused by a problem earlier in your story; Either you’ve realized something you have already written is not going to serve the current direction of the story, or you realize your outline or summary has a glaring hole in it.

Unfortunately, this is rarely a tidy thought like “I know there is a problem in what I’ve written; I need to fix it either now or later.” Instead it’s a sort of anxiety response that simply comes across as “I don’t want to write” or “I can’t write.” Even if you have the self-awareness (and story-awareness) to know that this particular instance of “I don’t want to write” is a problem in your story, you may not have an inkling as to what that problem actually is, let alone how to fix it.

When this is the case, you have to decide whether you want to figure out what is wrong with the story and fix it, or just keep writing the story and address it during revisions.

Most successful writers will tell you to address it during revisions. There are a couple reasons for this. First, they know from experience that finishing a bad story is going to do far more to improve your craft than perfecting an unfinished story. The story you are currently working on may not be your debut novel. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you finish it, you can learn from it and move on to the next novel more quickly. Second, they know (also from experience) that almost all the work that goes into writing a novel happens during revisions. Finishing your first draft is just getting started.

However, even if it is widely recommended, it may not be the right solution for you, or for your current problem. You may find it beneficial to reread your story from beginning to end and try to identify where it falls flat. You’ve probably been reading for a lot longer than you’ve been writing, and those reading skills might be enough to identify where the problem is.

Alternatively, you can fall back on various tools of the craft designed to help you identify problems. There are various plot structures and diagnostic tools such as the MICE quotient that you can use tho identify problems in your work. Study them and apply them to your work.

Consider taking your work to other writers for analysis and critique. If you have access to a local writing group, use it. Online writing groups such as Scribophile can occasionally have valuable feedback. Some professional authors provide workshopping services, either online or in person to help diagnose story problems. If you can afford it, you can also hire a professional editor. You may even want to share your book with alpha readers for feedback, but be aware that readers are good at discovering that there is a problem in a story, but not always good at identifying what that problem is or proposing a strong solution.

When You Don’t Know What Comes Next

More common for discovery writers than outliners, writer’s block can sometimes manifest as “I don’t know what comes next.” To be honest, I don’t think this situation arises all that frequently, even though it is usually the first scenario most people think about when they hear the words “writer’s block.”

When it does happen, there are two very different approaches you can take. The first is to “write anyway.” Write absolute drivel set in your story. We are planning to add a “write or die” mode to Fablehenge where you have to keep typing something (anything) for a certain period of time or you lose all your work. You can emulate this yourself; set a timer, and refuse to let your fingers go idle on the keyboard. What will come out will be absolute drivel, and you will eventually have to delete most of it. But I find that after a few paragraphs, some kind of weird “inspiration machinery” kicks in and I have an idea I can really work with. If you are old enough to remember manual transmissions, think of it like popping the clutch to start a rolling vehicle.

The other approach is to start writing an outline for the story you’ve already written. If you are discovery writing in Fablehenge, you might start by just dumping everything into one great big scene. Use the split scene feature to split it up into multiple distinct scenes. Add chapter breaks where they make sense. Fill out the summary of each scene and add any tags that are missing. This kind of housekeeping can give you a sense of where the story has already been, and will frequently give you an idea or two for where it goes next.

If, after trying one or both of these, you don’t know what comes immediately after your current plot point, consider skipping ahead as I suggested earlier. You can join up the two threads during revisions, or you may end up cutting one or both of them altogether. Discovery writing is full of false starts and odd digressions that don’t make it into the final novel. Embrace them.

Writing isn’t just about Banging Words Out

My last thought on writer’s block is that the act of “writing” doesn’t just happen at a keyboard or while holding a pen.

When you’re lying in bed just before sleep and an idea hits you to solve your latest problem, you are writing. When you are walking in the park thinking about where your novel needs to go, you are writing. When you drop the soap in the shower and a twinge in your back as you pick it up reminds you that your character is currently injured, you are writing.

Revising your story is writing. Rereading your story is writing. Reading other stories in your genres is writing, if you are intentional about what you learn from it. Reading books or listening to podcasts about writing, is part of the writer’s job.

When you can’t get the words out, or the words you can get out are the wrong words, sometimes the correct advice is to stop trying to get words out for a while. “Take a break and go for a walk,” can allow your brain time to process what needs to happen next, especially if you make it an intentional “brainstorming walk”.

Thinking about your story can be exhausting. It is work. So don’t discount the time spent thinking as “not writing.” It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to the creative process. Professional writers don’t have hands on keyboard for 8 hours a day, but they definitely spend that much time and more crafting their story.

It’s all About Self-awareness

Writer’s block is a named symptom of any one of a huge pile of different potential root causes. That is why the advice is so wildly varying on it. Different writers may only encounter a few variations of writer’s block, and the key is to know yourself so well that you can identify which one is affecting you in any given moment.

Once you’ve identified why you’re blocked this (particular) time, you can look into the best way to solve it. But if you try to solve it too early, there’s just too high a probability that you’ll choose the wrong tool to solve the wrong underlying problem.

Self-awareness is the most important tool in any creative person’s suite. It doesn’t matter if you love writing, painting, poetry, sculpting, coding, pottery, interior decorating, woodworking, needlework, photography, or any other art or craft. The better you know yourself, the better you will be at acquiring the skills needed to improve that craft.

If you know what your strengths are, you can leverage them, and if you understand your weaknesses, you can train or compensate for them.

The better your self-awareness, the better you will become at identifying problems and the correct solutions for you in any given moment. There is no blanket solution. Something that throws you off your game when you are feeling weak or tired can be exceptionally motivating when you are highly energized.

Everyone knows that having a tool in your inventory is useless if you don’t know how to use it. But it is less commonly known that knowing how to use a tool isn’t helpful unless you also know when to use it.