Writer’s Block

I’m not having it right now. Not yet at least. Right now, I’m being lazy and procrastinating or finding some other task to do instead of writing. Maybe I’m doing that because I actually don’t know what to write? Shit, do I have writer’s block? No. You can’t have writer’s block if you don’t start writing, right? I just released my first novel, HOST, my brain has moved to promoting / marketing / advertising (and very much learning as much as a I can), which has been fun, some days, but isn’t the writing I want / need to be doing. I have a solid outline for a second book, which I want to release next year, and a rough outline for a third, I want to release a year after that. Plenty to do, but why am I not writing? I honestly think writer’s block is horseshit. Sure you can get stuck, and yes, you have moments of procrastination, but this may sound crazy, you can write through it. Early on I thought every word, sentence, paragraph needed to be perfect. It doesn’t. I don’t remember the exact light bulb moment, maybe it was after reading Stephen King’s On Writing that I realized I just needed to get a draft done, no matter how terrible it was. Because writing is rewriting. If you’re stuck with a blank page, then maybe you’re not ready. Maybe you need a little plan, a few bullet points of what’s going to happen on that page. Try that, then write, and keep writing until it’s done. When I got stuck at points where I felt I needed more research I flagged it, and continued on with vague technical comments I’d clean up later. If I was stuck with a new scene, I’d close my eyes, listen to the playlist I created for the project, and visualized how I wanted the scene to look, feel like and play out, then started writing. Tim and I chat about writer’s block and our own encounters with it in our latest Writer’s Syndrome episode. Check it out…