Are you a victim of writer’s block? I was…and sometimes still am.
When I began work on my first novel, more than 30 years ago, I kept a daily journal recording my work habits. It’s painful to look at it today–but oh, so revealing.
One thing it shows is that I had confidence issues: after a bad day, 3 or 4 blank calendar squares would follow, proof that I’d stayed away from the desk like a burn victim shuns fire.
Another thing that jumps out at me is my perfectionism: I fussed endlessly over first draft chapters because they “lacked something.” A whole day might be spent getting one or two difficult paragraphs “just right.” I wanted to use a timer, but I couldn’t find the right one, and so on.
Then there are the “I suck” sign-offs on days when my ideas had run thin, or the quality of prose – and this was rough draft – didn’t resonate like finished Faulkner or Hemingway. On these days, I was ready to quit go to law school, take the cloth, anything but continue as the fraud I suspect I was.
Does this sound familiar? Have you struggled with means to fend it off or avoid it, and if so, what strategies have you developed for staying productive?
Here are a few tips based on the ways I’ve learned to deal with my own negative tendencies:
Confidence issues are rarely about the writing. They are about your view of you, and on bad days they take the form of judgmental inner voices saying (usually after you’ve just read Faulkner or Hemingway), “Who the hell do you think you are to dare enter the Pantheon of the Published?” Just tell them: “Hey, I’m trying to write my own best story, that’s all. I’m just a guy (or girl) trying to get a job done. Now, will you please shut up?” Don’t forget, on the very basic get-it-done level, the skills of writing, like the skills of tennis, are learned, practiced, and developed. Would you stop playing tennis if you weren’t a Federer? So why stop writing because you aren’t a Tolstoy? Just play your own best game.
Perfectionism is a sneaky enemy because it’s so close to “perfection, the quest for.” Like those weeds that mimic a legitimate plant so they can grow next to it and choke it to death, perfectionism masquerades as noble high standards in an age of trash, and so on. No. It’s a weed, but it can be dealt with a lot easier than most weeds. How? By deliberately lowering the standards you’ve taken for granted for your rough first-draft. Norman Mailer use to work facing a sign on the wall above his desk: “Lower Standards.” (His psychoanalyst suggested this tactic.) What if your perfectionism takes the form of quantity rather than quality: that is it demands X number of pages or words a day? Deliberately lower the number.
As for “I suck,” it usually means you’ve read your day’s work over at the end of a writing session, and it isn’t great. Your spirit implodes. Your heart keels over. You might even feel fingers of panic tickling the back of your neck. But wait – hear this: Nothing you write can be read fairly by you until some time has gone by, so don’t even give it a glance until the next morning. Personally, I don’t even do that unless I can’t recall where I left off: I push ahead without readiing, because I know that for me, to reread will be to look for winning prose, and that’s a loser’s game, not much different from expecting a coat of primer to gleam with the glossy perfection of finished enamel.
For simply getting words on screen or paper, I recommend freewriting. Lower your standards (yes, there will be garbage) set a time, and GO. Freewriting is a marvelous tool for busting any case of writer’s block because there is only one way to play the game of “5 Minute Freewrite,” And that’s to write.
So get to work. I’ll be expanding on these techniques and introducing others in an article I’m working on now. Stay tuned.
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