All of us joust with times when the words won’t flow. You might be the kind of writer who doesn’t weather the dry spell. Lucky you; you’re rare. Maybe if you report there’s no dry spells in your writing, you just don’t linger on them. Fleeting roadblocks won’t hold us back.
Unproductive habits and practices will close off the writing. If I’m ever to make the leap from writer to author on a book — it’s a leap, every single time — I must do something. Anything, because doing nothing is a choice. You choose to stay safe and fail to write.
What can we do when our words won’t arrive? We can try things, the acts we hurl against the wall of the blank page or an empty screen. Experimenting shows us what we can do.
We can fight perfection. It doesn’t help at first, this fear of getting it wrong. Few books and chapters appear without any need to revise. You won’t do the right thing at first. Get it completely wrong, but write it anyway. Revise, to make it right.
Memoirist extraordinaire Marion Winik taught me, in a Writer’s League class, about the powers of revision. She likes the word because of its root. You reach for a new vision of your writing. Re-vision, she called in a meaty page of notes.
A weak first draft of a passage is still better than a draft you don’t write. Imagined perfection is a mirage. Without writing, you’re still in the desert.
Try these
Change your venue. If you have a limited set of choices for where you write, you’ll find new ones outside your home. It can be just a 45-minute outing to the coffee shop. About the amount of time as a grocery run. Part of that time will be turning back the distractions on the way there. You’re so lucky if you have a shop you can walk to.
Explore new times. Meditation unlocks things, even five minutes’ worth. This place in time right after a little session might unlock your hope in yourself. Or you might find yourself open and accepting of the mission right after a workout, juiced with all those endorphins.
Dial back the discernment. We like to doubt, because we enjoy the concept that we’re discerning. Nothing could be that good, we might say. It leads us to dislike our earliest efforts. You can get affirmation about new writing in my Tuesday Lunchroom Write meetings. Just an hour, and you’ll like the price.
Get comfortable with early takes. Frank Sinatra was legendary for a lot of things, but he became known as falling in love with his first take on a song. It drove producers mad, and so there was combat galore. But Sinatra found his energy to create in his earliest performance. The minutes just before he had to deliver had a raw energy. It’s not easy to muster confidence before you’re taking action.
Assume you’ll get help. It might be a series of takes of that song on your page, but staying with it is a pro’s approach. It delivers you to the spot where others lift you higher. Author Steven Pressfield coaches us with his book Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. He’s a historical fiction author, but he believes in the mysticism of creating. When we put our ass where our heart wants to be, “the universe responds. We change. We see ourselves differently. But sometimes others see us differently, too. They may come to our aid in ways we could have never predicted.”
