Photo by John Schultz

A couple of weeks ago, after becoming madly inspired to write once again after weeks of lethargy, I finished Draft 1.5 of my Dark Lords novel with a total of 80,000 words. Or is that Draft 1? I wrote the first remnants of that first (or 0.5) draft during NaNoWriMo, and so it lacked polish… and structure… and an epic plot. It didn’t even have Theodore in it! Correction: it had Theodore, but in some random tangent daydream my protagonist thought up to avoid dealing with the current situation, because he’s like that.

My protagonist, however, despite the man of his dreams appearing and actually being interested in him, continually attempted to kill himself in the last two thousand words. Well, I had to put a stop to that! So frustrating. Maybe next draft, I’ll just let him die.

Now I’m procrastinating once again. It’s all there, in a more proper draft, but it requires so much work. It’s like putting together an excel report and then realizing not only that it requires a more handsome appearance, but that I need to come up with two new columns of data. Or like building the frame of the house, only to have to knock a few walls down and build an add-on room, as well as paint and decorate.

The big question in my head: What do I do now?

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Um…

Ah…

Hm…

???

Sometimes, your brain just disappears into howling abyss mode, AKA your brain is so blank that you can hear air howling as it moves. Your page just won’t fill with text. Your slide just won’t arrange itself. Your picture just won’t paint itself. The dreaded writer’s block.

However, there are a few tricks to help kick-start the creativity in your brain:

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You see this nonsense below? Those are three introductions to this blog post, each one failing to continue to the rest of the article. I wrote them down, and then just stopped. I couldn’t write any more. My brain told me that I sucked. These are examples of my writer’s block.

At some point, every person in the world has experience writer’s block. If you haven’t, you’re either very, very lucky, or you’re lying…

In my last blog post, I wrote about how ideas wouldn’t come when called. Ideas percolate in your brain until they just jump out at you. Writer’s block is when ideas refuse to jump out…

Writer’s block means different things for different circumstances. It’s hard to figure out a solution…

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