Sometimes We Just Can’t Seem to Write!

There are days when I can’t wait to write. I wake up just minutes before the alarm, clicking off the switch before the piercing sound busts my ear drums and puts me in a 1984 sort of mood where everything is thought for me. Everyone tells me when to get up in the morning.

So I grab a coffee, black, and head to my writing area. You know, that place where you feel most comfortable and were you meet your muse. (Especially on a good day like I’m having right now.) I am working on a project that I hope will become a young adult novel. The main protagonist, a sixteen-year-old girl, has been hanging around with a boy who has really gone of the deep end with addiction. He is part of a group that seems to love drugs and street crime. This young man is Brad. He loves her very much, but he has been been trying every substance and drug he can get his hands on. He smoked a lot of Spice one weekend and ended up taking all his clothes off and running around the neighborhood. The cops took him to the hospital for evaluation.

So my muse and I have been going all out. I haven’t slept much in the past three weeks. When an idea hits me, I turn on my laptop and start banging away. It’s really a kind of banging at the keys. This, of course, is the first draft. It isn’t too much of a mess though. I think I’ve been writing this story in my head for over ten years. Maybe more. I lived most of it. I felt changing the main character to a female would improve the story line and give everything a different viewpoint.

Sometimes, however, when we’re writing, we get stuck. Writer’s block! It will cause doubt. It will fill us with fear. We writers have an internal editor that shows up during the first draft and tries to tell us it’s all crap. It will never sell. This is not the best seller you were hoping to write. In fact, you will never finish anything worthy of being published. So, we sit there staring at the blank screen, listening to all this non-existent criticism and prediction of failure. Trust me, this is when it’s time to turn off the laptop, put on a bathing suit, and go swimming. Stay for hours. Think about the story, but in a non-exposition manner. In other words, don’t think about writing it. Instead, think about the girl. Her situation. Who will save her? Feel the emotion of the situation. Don’t think about being stuck. And whatever you do, don’t us the phrase “writer’s block” at all.

When you’re stuck, your only job is to relax. Let the tension seep out of your neck and shoulders, and run down your back, into the pool water. Float on your back and look up at the sky. Take in all its wonder. Settle your breathing. Feel the sun on your body. Don’t picture yourself sitting at your laptop. Too soon to go back there. Get out of the pool, dry off, and sit in the sun reading a book. What? You didn’t bring a book? What kind of writer are you? Go to the library and take out a new novel. Come back to your lounge chair and read. Oh, I don’t know. Read till you fall asleep. (Sunscreen, my friend!) Then go home. Read some more. Perhaps something other than the novel you just got. Put on an album. You do still own vinyl records don’t you? A good recommendation? Hall and Oates. Abandoned Luncheonette. Listen to the whole album. Sing along. Go to bed. When you get up tomorrow and have free time to write, try it again.

Welcome to writing!