Writer’s block. Most writers encounter it at some point in their career. But who better to learn how to overcome writer’s block from than some of the most successful writers publishing today?
26 Ways to Defeat Writer’s Block: A MasterClass in Writing
These lessons in defeating writer’s block come from Neil Gaiman, James Patterson, Dan Brown, Margaret Atwood, R.L. Stine, Aaron Sorkin, Shonda Rhimes, David Baldacci, Judy Blume, and David Mamet. All of them deliver fantastic MasterClasses, which will get you writing that novel, short story, or screenplay.
Retrace your steps
Neil Gaiman says that people love to talk about writer’s block because it sounds like a real thing. It sounds fancy. And it sounds like something you can do nothing about.
“I have writer’s block. I cannot write.”
But that isn’t true. When people say they have writer’s block, they actually mean they’re stuck on something. Instead of staring at the blank page, stop being angry, and go do something else. Go for a walk or a run or play with your dog.
Then come back, pretend you’ve never read it before, and read it through from the beginning. Where you came off the rails will then become obvious. And the problem is always earlier than you thought.
Stimulate creativity through physical activity
Writing is a sedentary process and it’s easy to get tired. But Dan Brown believes that if you’re writing thrillers, you need to have a pulse.
Every hour, when his hourglass runs out of sand, he does push-ups and sit-ups. When he stopped looking at the hourglass, he switched to an application called Time Out, which shuts down his computer for a couple of minutes. During that time, Brown gets his blood flow going.
He also finds he gets his best ideas while walking so he goes for long walks at the beginning of every novel. He takes a dictaphone and starts throwing ideas out.
Put “TBD” and get it on the next draft
Don’t torture yourself.
James Patterson suggests that if you come to a point in your work where things aren’t flowing, put “TBD” and go on to another part. And be confident that you’ll get it on the next pass.
A lot of writers are like couples who can’t get pregnant. They obsess over one chapter, become increasingly anxious, and start pressing too hard. If you’re not getting it, move on. Patterson has often had “TBD” on 3-4 chapters over the course of a couple of drafts.
Protect the process
This is written on a sticky-note above Dan Brown’s computer.
Writing a novel is a long process. All you need to do is get up every day and do the very best you can do and eventually the pages will pile up and you’ll have a novel.
Writing a novel seems intimidating, but if you protect your process the results will take care of themselves.
Switch projects
Shonda Rhimes believes that writer’s block exists, but the best way she found to combat writer’s block is to “deny its existence entirely” because it’s do damaging. She used to go through periods of time where it was really bad. So she just decided she didn’t believe in it anymore.
And when she can’t figure out what to write or how to write something, she simply writes something else. Because she’s had eight years of having multiple shows (between 2-3) she gets to go back and forth between different projects.
Rhimes tells you with complete assurance that if you get stuck, your brain can switch over to another medium or topic, which will unstick your brain. If Rhimes gets stuck writing Grey’s Anatomy, she can go write something for Scandal and that will unstick her for Grey’s.
Be willing to recalibrate
The biggest thing you can do when you’re stuck is to remember you’re stuck.
Neil Gaiman suggests you figure out why you are stuck.
- Do you need to go deeper?
- Are you being too shallow?
- Do you need to be more honest?
- Why don’t you want to write this scene?
- Why is it painful for you?
- What will happen if you do write it?
Gaiman stopped writing Anansi Boys for a couple of months while he tried to work out the difference between comedy, tragedy, and horror, which he needed to do so that he could deliver on his idea.
Be willing to stop, learn, figure things out, and recalibrate.
No one’s going to see your first drafts, so do what you need to do.
Freight train through
James Patterson recommends a process that Raymond Chandler had – just getting the first draft down as quickly as possible.
Patterson can do the first draft in a month.
Limit distractions
Dan Brown likes to write very early in the morning because that’s when he’s fresh. There’s no one bothering him at four in the morning. And getting up early signals to himself that he’s taking the work seriously.
That’s part of his process.
On top of that, Brown’s workspace has no internet. That means no email pouring in. The space also doesn’t have a phone. This is where he creates. No researching “just one little thing” and getting sidetracked with irrelevant information for hours.
If Brown needs to fill in the blanks with research, he does a similar thing to James Patterson and puts a bunch of big red Xs that tell him to figure it out later.
Give yourself a deadline
Neil Gaiman was asked for a short story for a science fiction anthology aimed at young adults. He had an idea, wrote a few openings, but it kept dying on the page.
So he phoned his editor, apologised, and told him he wouldn’t be able to complete it in time. The editor told Gaiman that he still had twenty-four hours to write the story, and that another writer had just submitted a story that she had written in twelve hours.
So he took his notebook and found a way to make it work and ended up with a Hugo Award-nominated short story that was eventually made into a film (How to Talk to Girls at Parties).
The time crunch made Gaiman focus.
Divide things up
After “Where do you get ideas?” the most common question R.L. Stine gets is “how do you get over writer’s block?” But he never gets writer’s block. Sometimes he feels like he’s writing uphill, but he always keeps going because he knows he can go back and fix it.
What R.L. Stine does to help things flow smoothly is divide things up. There’s no wondering what his characters look like while he’s in the middle of writing the story. He starts with a complete list of character personalities, then moves onto the outline.
“If you have an outline, it’s very hard to have writer’s block because you know where to go next.” And if you’re having trouble with one chapter, you can go onto the next one.
Drive around and listen to music
People ask Aaron Sorkin if he’s ever experienced writer’s block and he just laughs because that’s his “default position.” He’s in a constant state of writer’s block and sometimes, from time to time, he runs into not having writer’s block. He talks about how his current manuscript has him stuck on page 15 for the last 5 weeks.
Driving around in his car while listening to the music he loved in high school sometimes helps to inspire Sorkin. He’ll pick a long stretch of road (like the 405 freeway) so he doesn’t have to think about turning and blast some early Springsteen or Cat Stevens and he’ll think, “This song would work great as the score to a scene.”
He does it in reverse order and writes a scene that could be scored by this song. To do that, he needs to write the scene leading up to that scene, and the scene before that one. Suddenly the song has kickstarted everything.
David Baldacci also works on a different project when he’s blocked and he finds that this frees up your mind so your subconscious is working on that one plot problem while you tackle another.
Train your concentration
James Patterson believes in training yourself to write anywhere at any time, but also writing for longer stretches. And when you’re writing, you’re just writing. You’re not intermittently checking your phone or playing a game. You’re getting into your scene and focusing purely on that.
The more you focus on doing one thing at a time, the stronger your concentration becomes.
Write the next thing you know
Neil Gaiman says that when writing a novel, you are going to be moving from point to point with a lot of things you don’t know along the way.
E.L. Doctorow said that, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” So be content to creep along.
Be tough on process, but gentle on outlook
Dan Brown says that if you want to sleep in instead of getting up to write as part of your process at four in the morning, that’s the time to be tough on yourself. You have to go to your desk.
The moment to be gentle with yourself is when you’ve been writing for five hours and discover that the scene won’t work. You don’t beat yourself up. You put in the time and protected your process.
Sometimes you have to write the wrong scene a few times before you write the right scene. So “type like nobody’s watching” because nobody is watching.
Go take a shower
David Baldacci can’t express how many plot and character issues have been solved just by virtue of having the water wash over him.
Another benefit is that you’ll be astonishingly clean if this is your go-to method for beating writer’s block.
Take a break
James Patterson doesn’t work for a living, he plays for a living. So he writes seven days a week. But if you suddenly don’t love it, take a break for a week. If you’re getting neurotic, turn it off.
When Patterson was feeling like the pressure was too much, he’d go to the movies. He went to the movies every afternoon and sometimes saw the same movie two or three times. He’d even walk out of the movie halfway through in order to go back and write and then would return to see the second half the next day.
Give crazy ideas a chance
Dan Brown has never been a big believer in writer’s block. He’s been a believer in writing the wrong thing. But the easy cure for writer’s block, according to Brown, is to write. And if you’re not sure what to write, write the wrong thing a few times. Let that be the process that guides you towards the right thing.
Writer’s block is about being too hard on yourself. Just put it down and accept that, because it’s a first draft, it’s probably not going to be right. But it will get better with each draft.
Brown particularly loves an idea he got from Steve Tyler of Aerosmith, where each week the band get together and have a meeting called “Dare to Suck” where each member brings an idea that is probably terrible. Nine times out of ten the idea is terrible and embarrassing. But one time out of ten you get “Dude Looks Like A Lady” or “Love In An Elevator”.
Discipline yourself
R.L. Stine is like a machine when it comes to writing. He makes his writing routine almost like factory work and sticks to it every day. It’s a good thing to aim for that kind of discipline if you want to be a writer.
“Or maybe it’s crazy,” Stine says. “You’d have to be crazy to write 300 books.”
After 25 years of Goosebumps, Stine still sits down around 9:30 in the morning, has his outline ready, and writes 2,000 words (or about 10 pages) every day. He finishes around four hours later. Goosebumps books have to be 23,000 words. Stine sets himself a goal every day (like writing 2,500 words), then he won’t get up until he’s done.
And when he hits his word count, no matter where he is in the story, he quits. This is a trick to make it so much easier to start up again the next day.
“You can’t have writer’s block if you’re already in the middle of a scene.”
Don’t focus on details too early
There’s a lot of different parts to writing a novel. So your process is going to look different at different stages of writing.
Dan Brown says your process at the beginning might look like walking on the beach with a dictaphone to get ideas. While you’re outlining, your process might just look like bullet-points. Another part of your process might just look like you getting in down on the page with punctuation and spelling mistakes. There’s another kind of writing called editing. And another called proofing.
If you try to go through every style of writing process when you sit down, you’re going to waste a lot of time. Take the pressure off yourself, get the ideas down without worrying on the details, and be like Michelangelo sanding a block down until you have that statue.
Walk away, or go to sleep
Judy Blume doesn’t believe in writer’s block. “Put that out of your mind,” she says. “There are good days. And there are less good days.” On the days where things aren’t flowing, Blume gets up, walks away, and does something physical.
“The physical helps the mental come to where it needs to be.”
It was during many long walks that Blume had some of her greatest breakthroughs for her manuscripts.
David Mamet also doesn’t experience writer’s block, but he does get stuck sometimes. In those instances, he just takes the day off or goes for a walk.
Mamet works on one thing until he gets bored, or “blocked”, then he goes home and complains. Then he comes back and works on it again the next day.
His wife knows things are going well with Mamet’s writing when on Monday and Wednesday he says he’s written the best thing ever, and on Tuesday and Thursday he says he wants to kill himself for being a no-good hack.
Margaret Atwood also recommends the well-known ancient remedy for writer’s block: walking away, or going to sleep. Tell yourself the problem, go to sleep, and when you wake up you may have the solution.
She also recommends ironing as the repetitive manual activity is quite conducive to thoughts coming in from the subconscious, which is exactly what you need when you’re blocked.
David Baldacci recommends this too, finding that long walks free your mind up. When you’re tense you can’t think clearly. So walk, look at the sky, let your mind wander.
“Wandering minds solve a lot of complicated plot problems.”
Take it seriously
James Patterson acknowledges that he’s not writing Ulysses, but he has a mindset that carried over from his advertising days. He’d be writing commercials for Ford cars, Burger King, and Toys-R-Us, which were kinda dopey but he much preferred making little films that were good and he could be proud of by the end of the week.
If he had condescended to it or not gave it his best, he would have felt like shit by the end of the week. If you want to feel good by the end of the week, give it your all and don’t condescend to the genre.
Write hours, not pages
There’s a problem with setting a page quota. If your quota is a page a day and you have a fantastic writing day, your page might be done in one hour. Then you quit on a great day. That’s a waste.
Then you might have a tough day and things just aren’t flowing but you have to get your one page and thirteen hours have passed, you’re going to discover the page is terrible the next day anyway.
Dan Brown’s process is that he writes from four in the morning until eleven in the morning every day. Whatever happens, happens.
Find your tools and rituals
R.L. Stine no longer uses a typewriter and now writes all of his books on a MacBook Pro. But for some mysterious reason, he can’t write outlines on his computer. He has to plot on a yellow pad.
Everybody has different idiosyncrasies and you should give everything a try to find what works best for you.
One of R.L. Stine’s writer friends had to write on a haunted desk surrounded by candles with eerie music playing. Stine, however, can write anywhere, but not with music playing. Every writer is different.
Stine’s friend, bestselling author Harlan Coben, is the complete opposite to him. He has to berate himself to write, whereas it’s a joy for Stine. Coben needs a noisy coffee shop, whilst Stine needs quiet. So remember that what works for another writer may not work for you.
Set the table for breakfast
Dan Brown does this at the end of every writing day. He ends his writing session by preparing for the next day. He gets his desk and manuscript ready to receive him the next day.
If he’s finished a chapter and wants to pack up for the day, he’ll write the beginning of tomorrow’s chapter so that he can get his engine going quicker the next day.
Key shared traits of great writers who don’t get writer’s block
Although each writer is different, each one having their own particular likes, dislikes, and habits, we can see from the advice of these 10 writers some common overlap. So you’d do well to adopt these writing habits as your own in the battle against writer’s block.
- They outline. Yes, there are many famous pantsers (like Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Harlan Coben), but it certainly seems like outliners are in the majority. It makes sense – it’s hard to get writer’s block if you know exactly what you need to write!
- They go for walks and get the blood flowing. Whether you’re stopping writing every hour to do push-ups like Dan Brown, or taking leisurely walks like Margaret Atwood, physical exercise is a must for any writer and has been a core habit of some of the best writers in history like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.
- They have a process that they protect. Committing to a specific process tells your unconscious that you’re serious about this writing business. If you know you’re going to turn up at the same time and place to do the same work, after a while you’ll get into a groove and writer’s block will be a thing of the past.
- They don’t actually believe in writer’s block. Whether they’ve brainwashed themselves into believing it through traumatic experience or whether they truly love writing so much they cannot even conceive of the concept, most of these writers don’t believe in writer’s block. It seems like Aaron Sorkin and David Mamet are the outliers in this instance.