There is no room for excuses if your dream is to write
professionally.
People who write for a living (and very few actually can survive on their writing alone) can’t
afford to let excuses, distractions, or “writer’s block” get in the way. There
are deadlines to meet and readers to appease. If the writer is paid by the word
or the assignment then their income depends on their ability to produce, to
write and to keep writing.
What are some of the common reasons people DON’T write? Fear
is a big one — fear of rejection, criticism, vulnerability (writing is VERY
personal), and failure. Life sometimes gets in the way which is ironic since
things that happen in your life can also make you a stronger writer; sometimes
though family events, illness, everyday stress, and various distractions
interrupt your writing. Sometimes you might not know what you want to say, or
sometimes what you want to say doesn’t sound like what you are writing and you
are blocked.
So what can you do to get around the “writer’s block” or
other difficulties you might have?
Conquer that fear of rejection by writing for a specific
audience and not for everyone. A friend once said to me, “When you go into the
bookstore do you want to read EVERY book on the shelves? Just like you have
likes and dislikes, so do others. Your book will not please everyone and that
is okay.” Think about it, not everyone likes the same genre or style, so don’t
try to please everyone. Write for a target audience. And yes you still may get
a bad review or criticism, almost everybody does, learn from it but never let
it stop you from writing.
If you are writing a story (fiction) and it isn’t going the
way you imagined, maybe your characters are trying to write it for you. Think about
being a little bit flexible and give your characters a chance to add their own story
telling — yes, let your characters drive the story a little bit and just write.
You can edit after you finish the story and make any necessary changes to the
story. Realize though that if you have built truly three-dimensional characters
they might make different decisions than you do based on their background
experiences, likes and dislikes, and their own fears and desires. Just keep
writing.
When life gets in the way sometimes it might be something
that is hard to get around. Something like an illness, your own or someone
close to you, takes time away from your writing because of care-giving, emotions
(including worry), or the inability to type/write. Try to set aside some time,
even if it is only a fraction of what you did before, to put words on paper,
not only will it help you produce it may also help relieve some of your stress.
But… if you are going to miss a deadline, or not produce at all, let your
editor or publisher know that there is a problem and ask if the deadline can be
extended or if they would rather have someone else do the job; while you may
lose the assignment you won’t lose credibility with your editor and will likely
be able to resume writing for them at a later date.
Some of the usual methods writers use to overcome “writer’s
block” include: Leave your desk and take a short walk; Free write anything that
pops into your head; Do some exercise and get the body’s blood flowing; If you
have more than one project in front of you, change to another project to give
your writing a jolt; If you are overtired, take a short nap or get a good night’s
rest and then go back to writing; Listen to a good song and dance through it;
or Play a word game or computer game for a little while.
Writing
Exercise: Set your timer for 30-minutes and shut out
the rest of the world (as best as you can). Write about ANYTHING, it doesn’t
even have to make sense. You can write a bunch of random thoughts, make lists,
write little snippets of stories, or even rewrite the story you read last.
Writing
Prompt: Make lists of three ANYTHINGs: look around the room you
are in, pick out three random words from the dictionary, list three errands you’ve
recently run, A N Y T H I N G. When you have at least ten groups of three, take
each group and write no more than two sentences using ALL three items. Keep
doing that until you have one to two sentences for each group of three.
Challenge
Assignment: Write a short story from 1000 to 1500
words. Choose something that you WISH had happened in your life but didn’t.
