You’re well on the way now to getting your fingers tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard, but when? Your desk is clean, and a comforting place to be. Or you can set up your writing faster than you can say antidisestablishmentarianism.
And yet…
You procrastinate; you clean your house so thoroughly that open heart surgery can be performed on your lounge room floor, or you suddenly decided to bake a six layer sponge with Italian Meringue cream. I know, we all do it. One more bit of research, after you’ve finished the book that you are currently reading — the excuses can be endless.
You need a plan. Pick a time to start, and start then — no later. Dishes (much too general dismay) do not clean themselves, but they will wait patiently for you to do that other thing, you know, the writing. Yes, that’s the one.
So sit your butt in your comfy chair and BEGIN.
Unless it is life-threatening, do not leave your chair for any reason until you have finished your allotted word count for the day. As Jon Morrow puts it “write under pressure — from your bladder.” You will be truly amazed at how fast you can actually type.
Two examples here: Stephen King, who is a tremendously successful writer, treats his writing as a job. Every day he sits at his desk and doesn’t leave until he has written his thousand word minimum. George R R Martin, on the other hand now “regrets not keeping ahead of the TV series”. Let’s face it, the man is not getting younger and there are going to be millions of disappointed readers should he die before publishing the last book in A Song of Ice and Fire AKA Game of Thrones.
Are you dithering and procrastinating because you don’t know where to start? Or worse, because something is wrong? Or do you not know where you are going?
Where to start? Normally the answer would be at the beginning. Normally… but writers aren’t normal people. If we were, we’d all be dressed conservatively and heading off to the office.
Writers aren’t normal simply because the world between our ears is so much more interesting than anything ‘out there’. More on that anon.
Have you ever walked to the shops? Think about it for a second, you want to go to the shops — so when you step out of the door, do you go in the opposite direction, with a vague hope that the shops will appear before you? Or do you know where the shops are and head that way? It is exactly the same with writing. It helps immensely if you know where you are going. Begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey put it.
Trouble picking up where you left off? Fairly short answer here. If you find yourself having a hard time writing a fresh new sentence to start, leave a sentence unfinished and write that ending first. If it’s perfect in your head, write that down on paper and have it next to your computer, or use the notes app on your phone (no copy paste — that’s cheating, and won’t have the same effect). We need to stimulate those neural pathways in your brain.
Now for the biggie; something is wrong, you don’t know what, never mind how to fix it. Sometimes it can be just like that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle… the missing one. At others, you know how the story goes, you know what’s ahead — and you don’t want to go there.
The human brain cannot differentiate between reality and fantasy. Truly! I mean, how many times have you gotten a lump in your throat because a favorite character died in a TV show? Logically, the actor is alive and well, only pretending, and yet the tears pour out. If this is the situation in which you find yourself and your characters, sorry, you have to keep pulling the words out however hard that may be.
Last but not least. You know something is missing, but you don’t know what’s missing, ergo, you can’t go and find it. This is where we get back to the writer’s head. Writer’s look inwardly A LOT. Now is the time to fly the nest, spread your wings and take a leap of faith.
You’re going to go for a walk. Before you leave the house though, you are going to ask yourself one question (if you don’t like your neighbors, you can yell):
“What is it that I don’t know about [your story title here] yet?
Now walk. Around the block, up the hill, down the dale — wherever your legs take you. Feel the sunshine on your face, or the rain if you forgot your umbrella, feel the thud of your feet on the ground, how it pounds out a rhythm. Smell the flowers, listen to the cars dopplering by you, or the birdsong, it’s spring now in Australia, so be aware of the rustling at your feet which means SNAKE!
Don’t consciously think of your story at all. Now is the time for your body. Ninety-six per cent of the time you will have an answer, or at least a glimmering by the time you return. If you are in the four percent, then just repeat the exercise. As in the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams ‘if you [ask] it, [answers] will come.’
There you have it, some easy tips to become unstuck. So what are you waiting for?
GO WRITE.
To see one version of the song that inspired this blog post title, click on this link:
These guys got in a lot of trouble for doing this, just bear with it until they take a knee, then the fun and games begin. I just hope that it works on a Mac!
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