Writers Block
By Karen Ranney
© 2005 All rights reserved.
I don’t believe in writer’s block. I can’t. I’m a professional writer. I write for a living. I have come to enjoy the roof over my head and being able to buy groceries. I don’t write – I don’t get paid.
However, I DO believe that there are times when you can just suck at what you write. Nothing makes sense, your characters are wooden, and you really, really don’t care about what you’re writing.
When that happens, I take a nap.
Honest. A good restorative nap is the best thing in the world for the grumps. Then, I sit down at my computer and write down the ten jobs I wouldn’t like to have in the entire world. After that exercise, I print out what I’ve written and what I think sucks in the form of a galley – two printed pages landscape format on one page.
You see, I go through the tortures of the damned when reading galleys. It’s too late to make substantive changes, so all the plot problems, character problems, etc. are there in glaring Technicolor. An author is only allowed 50 changes, which isn’t much when you want to revise the entire book (which has already been revised 15 times). I start thinking: I’m a lousy writer. Why did I ever think I could write? Dear God, I should do anything else (which is where the list of the ten worst jobs I can think of comes in to play). I read the list, decide I can’t DO any of those jobs and start revising.
You can always edit the bad stuff, and breathe life into your people. You can’t do anything with a blank page but stare at it and think of the ten jobs.