Writers' Block

I stopped doing NaNoWriMo on the second or third day. The first day I started late and pumped out just under a days' worth of words derived from the experience of the night before, putting flesh to the skeleton of a whodunit I vaguely outlined a few years ago. The second and third days saw me staring at the screen, unable to weave more flesh, writing speculative story directions and self-directed curses. By the fourth day, Wednesday, still unable to continue, I decided I wasn't going to be able to. The well was empty. There simply wasn't anything there.

Too much in my head about real life. There's no escaping it, not this year. (The ten to twelve hour days with nightly conference calls to Asia may have been a factor also.)

But I also suffer from technique. I tend to try and write as though I am reading a book that I have to write so that I may read it. This means sit at a table or up in bed or in a chair with my little netbook in my lap and craft the story, beginning to end. Side notes are of course allowed. But it's a very narrow technique and it doesn't work.

Techniques vary as artists vary. The trick is to free yourself to find what works. Here is an article about some authors whose techniques work, a Writers' Block of artists for whom writer's block is an occasional annoyance but by no means lethal to the process.