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Writer’s Block by Casia Pickering

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An authors thoughts on Writer’s Block

by Casia Pickering

Writer’s block. It’s real, folks. Seriously. Take right this moment as an example. I wanted to sound pretentious, informative, and intellectual, permitted to sit among the greats, but really, I’m just me- a writer with the block. The block is called “The Guest Post.”

For me, I dislike calling it a block. A block feels like a Rubix cube or a blockage in the circulatory system. One aspect is easily solvable if you know the formula or have the time to take off the stickers and place them on the cube correctly. The other image? Well, without proper medical care, that shit can kill you.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t have the patience to take off the stickers on a Rubix cube, nor do I feel like getting probed to see if I’m going to kick the bucket anytime soon. Let’s face it; neither image feels very “Author.”

Nope. I consider the block as a wall because that’s what it is. You are running through a maze made by your imagination, and you made the wrong turn, meeting with a wall- The Writer’s Wall. 

So, what do you do about the wall? It’s pretty simple. You have three options from where I stand, and all of them suck, but hey, you can get around it.

Option one is backtracking. Follow down the path you just went through and see what had caused you to make that wrong turn. There was one time I met the wall, and I backtracked. It turned out that a secondary love interest to the triangle wanted more screen time. It turns out he was a central character, that he had personality, and I needed to show it. I have to rewrite that story again because it turns out I still haven’t given him the love he needs.

Option two is breaking the wall. Just go for it. Write something completely off the wall in your story. Force the story to happen. Just grab that sledgehammer and slam it into the bricks, break the plaster, cut through the drywall, and make that small home into a beautiful renovation that will make HGTV cry tears of adoration. This is an excellent option if you are on a blank page. A great example of me doing that is at the beginning of this post. That was me taking the sledgehammer into the wall.

Option three is parkour. Come on. I know you had to have run and jumped on a jungle gym as a child. Do you remember being fearless? I do. Sometimes, I do silly things and twirl, all the while screaming “Parkour.” Yes, it does make people stare at me, but hey, it works. No, I don’t do actual parkour, but I do like to do something physical and productive to break what keeps me from writing. Usually, it is chores or just doing something silly. What matters is you don’t focus on the act of writing. Instead, you do something different. Eventually, the blood will get to the brain, and the brain will hit the imagination, thereby helping you write.

So, is the block actual? Yes, but it’s a wall, and everyone knows that if you can build a wall, you can tear it down. That’s why we made catapults, to fly over them and take over the kingdom.

Writer’s Block by Brandon Barrows

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An authors thoughts on Writer’s Block

by Brandon Barrows

Hi. I’m Brandon Barrows. Maybe we’ve met before. Maybe you’ve read my previous novel Burn Me Out, or the one before that, This Rough Old World or possibly a story of mine in various magazines and anthologies. Maybe you’ve already ordered my next novel, Strangers’ Kingdom are eagerly awaiting the chance to dive into it. If so, my sincerest thanks.

But I’m here today to talk about something else, something all three of those novels—and honestly, most of my work, has been afflicted by at some point in the past: writer’s block.

Some people don’t believe writer’s block is real. I believe those people either have never tried writing anything or are just really, really insanely lucky to have never experienced it. All three of my published novels mentioned above have suffered from it at some point or another in the writing process.

This Rough Old World took two years and more than a dozen drafts, beginning as a twenty-five-thousand-word novella and ending up as an eighty-three-thousand-word novel before it was done. In between drafts, I often went weeks or even months without touching it simply because I had no idea what came next. The same is true of Strangers’ Kingdom, but it was even longer: three years. I got stalled at around the seventy-thousand-word mark and realized I had no idea how to end the book. It sat, completely untouched, for a year and a half before I was able to beat it into submission.

It’s frustrating. It makes you doubt yourself, your ability, the worthiness of this pursuit. You wonder, could I be doing something better with my time? But I never quit. Even when I wasn’t working on this books, I was working on something else, because I just had to. Not writing is pretty unthinkable and to be perfectly honest, the times when I can’t write hurt. It’s a kind of ache that’s almost physical, knowing you should be producing but not being able to. And eventually, you just find a way to get going again because there’s no other choice.

A lot of people say they think they have a novel in them, or they want to write a book someday, and just never get around to it. A lot use writer’s block as an excuse. That’s okay, if you’re okay with it. Absolutely no judgment.

But that’s what separates writers from regular folks: no matter how hard it is, no matter how much it hurts, you keep going, because you have to. To do anything else is unthinkable.

That’s what it was like writing Strangers’ Kingdom. I knew how the story started, but had no idea how it ended and it took me a lot of brain-wracking and soul-searching and just plain forcing myself to get it done. But I did it. And when it was done, I felt great, even though I knew there were parts I would need to rewrite. But that’s part of the process, too. The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. The guts of writing comes later, in the revising and the editing stage. It doesn’t really matter what goes into that first draft, so long as there is a first draft. That’s what I kept telling myself and that’s how I learned to break through the writer’s block.

Writer’s block still happens, of course, but learning how to deal with it is something you just have to do if you want to write. And once you do, trust me, you’ll feel great.