I have just been through my first real bout of writer’s block. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, it simply refers to a writer’s inability to come up with new ideas or to continue writing. Some authors may have a minor setback (such as myself in this instance) or it can range to years of being blocked (which I cannot imagine).
I have said before and I will say again that a huge part of any success I have as an author (the fact that I have completed four, almost five, novels I count as success much less that one of them is about to be published) has been due to determination. It’s true that I don’t always feel like writing in my rather limited “free time” that I have to write. So, I must sometimes make myself write and the creative juices will eventually start flowing. This was not something that could be worked through with determination however.
There are different kinds of blocks that a writer can experience…not being able to come up with an idea to get started, having too many ideas and not being able to narrow it down, having written yourself into a corner, having taken a bad writing turn many pages ago and being stuck…to name a few. My problem was that I was just stuck. Not that my characters had become boring or I had written myself into a corner. I just couldn’t come up with the next sentence. It was awful. I would sit and stare at my computer screen for minutes on end (I don’t have the kind of time to spend hours staring at a computer screen).
What did I do to break the block? Nothing special. Just kept going back to that awful screen with the cursor set at the place where new words needed to go. And one day, the words just came. So, I guess you could say that once again, my determination to continue returning to my computer, preparing to write, paid off.