How to get past a brick wall in writing
Writer’s block and ‘blank page syndrome’ are well-documented phenomenon. When you’re staring at a blank page, or a big chunk of blank page underneath what you’ve already written, sometimes you just don’t know what the next thing to write is.
This happened to me yesterday.
It’s April. For me, that means Camp NaNoWriMo. In April, July and November, I commit to writing a novel in a month — 50,000 words in 30 days (or 31 in July), or an average of about 1,667 words a day. The idea behind racing to write so much, so fast, is that you blurt out everything you need to say and you don’t worry about your internal editor.
In April, July and November, I open up a blank document and I start writing. The week before the first of the month, I’m brainstorming constantly, thinking about that first line, first scenario, first scene, first chapter, first title, first concept. First, first, first.
But I never think about what comes after first. You see, I’m a classic pantser, which means I write by the seat of my pants. I know the general direction I’m heading (“I want Sarah to argue with her parents”, “I want James to kiss the girl”, “I want to show off this new city the characters have arrived in”), but I don’t know the details of how my goal is going to come about. I just have my goal, my blank page, and these wits, baby.
So when my brain stuttered to a halt about 1500 words into my first chapter yesterday, on April 1, I started to panic. Maybe my idea wasn’t as good as I thought. Maybe I wasn’t going to be able to get 50,000 words out of it. Maybe this character was too difficult, too unknown, too boring, and I needed to do a major re-think of the whole story and concept.
Bam. Brick wall.
But I ended the night with 2662 words, and a complete chapter one.
How?
I focused on the goal.
My original goal was to have my main character, Eleanor, argue with her parents in public. But Eleanor ended up punching someone who tried to touch her without her permission, at which point her parents intercepted — cut to chapter two.
I got to 2662 words by focusing on the goal. The real goal, which was to showcase Eleanor’s argumentative personality and her discomfort in the social situation she was forced into. I got there by picking at my keyboard, one, two, three words at a time. I stared. I folded my arms. I pulled my blankets over my head and checked my social media feeds and my Discord channels and even my work Slack.
But every one word more that I wrote was one more than I had before. I kept asking myself, “what’s the goal here? What do I want?”
Answer: I want Eleanor to pick a fight.
Doesn’t matter with who. Doesn’t really matter how, or what it’s about. Doesn’t matter if she uses slang more appropriate to an Instagram caption than a royal court. This is draft zero. This is me getting it out onto the page, no matter what form it takes.
Here’s how you break through a brick wall: one brick at a time.
Here’s how you break through a writer’s block: one word at a time.
Break it down to the simplest thing — the bricks, the words. Then start chipping away. Every word you have is one more word than you had before.
Now go smash!
