Itโ€™s practically inevitable. Youโ€™re rockinโ€™ and rollinโ€™ through your writing process, you let the creative juices flow, and then you reach a sudden halt: Youโ€™re blocked. And you have no idea how to solve writer’s block.

The words wonโ€™t come. It seems like thereโ€™s nothing more, and yet youโ€™ve got things to do. Deadlines to meet. A writing schedule to stick to.

Pin

It can seem impossible to write another word when you experience a creative block. The good news is that with a handful of steps, you can readjust your writing routine and reenergize your creative flow.

it can be done.

Hereโ€™s how to write a book when youโ€™ve got writerโ€™s block.

Want to learn how to write a book from start to finish? Check outย How to Write a Book: The Complete Guide.

What is Writerโ€™s Block?

This seems obvious: Writerโ€™s block is a writerโ€™s inability to write. When in this position, writers can find themselves sitting at their desk for hoursโ€”and no amount of inspiring writing quotes can clear their writer’s block.

Instead, writerโ€™s block is the result of several problems, like low self-confidence and poor planning. And to fully address this complicated situation, itโ€™s important to take a number of steps that will restore the writerโ€™s confidence and plan a course for success.

This is the only way you can save your writing day and make progress on your book when youโ€™ve got writerโ€™s block.

How to Write a Book When You’ve Got Writer’s Block: The 5-Step Plan

Ready to overcome your block and revitalize your writing? Here’s your recovery plan:

Step 1: Take a Step Back

Some coaches out there will encourage you to plow onward no matter what.

That may be good advice for a determined few, but for the rest of us itโ€™s just plain impossible. It might even unintentionally make you a bad writerโ€”or a discouraged one.

In some situations, the words simply wonโ€™t come. And when we force them out, theyโ€™re terrible and we hate them and we hate ourselves for writing them.

What do you do then?

Simple: Stop.

Stop writing and take a step back.

Itโ€™s important to understand that writerโ€™s block is caused by specific knots in your story, not general ones. In other words, itโ€™s not youโ€”itโ€™s your protagonist. Or your setting. Or your point of view.

Something specific to the story isnโ€™t working as youโ€™ve been approaching it, so you need to stop and back up, if just for awhile.

Writing a book is a lot like navigating a maze. Consider how complicated each characterโ€™s journey is. When you write the story, youโ€™re finding your way through the labyrinth without a map.

Reaching a dead-end is the same as writerโ€™s block. You have to stop moving forward, step back, and find your way to love creative writing again.

Crashing into the same wall isnโ€™t going to solve your problems.

Remember: The block is specific, not general. You donโ€™t suck. This moment in your storytelling life is what sucks, so you need to step away and gain some perspective.

Step 2: Emancipate Yourself

One of the reasons youโ€™re blocked might be an imaginary rule.

What is an imaginary rule? Itโ€™s a rule that you have created for yourself that youโ€™re unwilling to break, and itโ€™s killing your writing.

Have you created a self-imposed deadline for yourself? As in, โ€œI have to have this done by Julyโ€?

Or have you read a bunch of great literature, only to demand that your first draft look and sound just like The Great Gatsby or Beloved?

Another rule I tend to create for myself is a story rule. These look like this:

  • The story has to take place entirely in one room.
  • The story has to be in the first-person point of view.
  • This character has to die.

And so on. We make these rules for ourselves because we want to achieve greatness, or reach a particular writing goal.

But more often than not, they tend to trap us in prisons of our own making. When we canโ€™t meet our own impossible demands, we submit to the feeling of failure and throw in the towel.

You have to emancipate yourself from these imaginary rules. Free yourself from the bondage of perfectionism.

Identify the imaginary rule youโ€™ve created that is holding you prisoner. Write it down in a way that frees you: โ€œThe story can take place in any room. It can be in any point of view.โ€

Whatever you need to free yourself from this false bondage and get back to creating with freedom.

Step 3: Unplug

To fully recover from the frustration of your writerโ€™s block, you need a break.

Take a short sabbatical from your labors. Unplug from the world of your writing and enjoy the things that refresh your body and spirit. Visit nature. Play with your children. Make other kinds of art. Watch your favorite movies or a season of your favorite show.

Part of the reason you need to unplug is to separate your humanity from this project. The frustration becomes personal. The rules and expectations that have been driving you become unforgiving taskmasters.

Unplugging is the physical action you must take to redefine your writing life.

Also, you may not be able to fully emancipate yourself from your imaginary rules until youโ€™ve unplugged. Steps two and three go hand-in-hand. Rediscovering your humanity works side-by-side with reframing your independence as a writer.

Make sure to keep your sabbatical brief, though. Give it a deadline since it can threaten your long-term productivity, and hold to it.

But let yourself live a little and reconnect with the things in life that inspire you to create in the first place, free from crushing expectations and the feeling of failure.

Step 4: Strategize

When your retreat ends, itโ€™s time to get back to work. But if you simply start banging your head into the same wall in the labyrinth, youโ€™ll just end up back where you were.

Instead, plan ahead before your jump back in.

A book is a large undertaking with numerous parts. Certainly there are parts where you arenโ€™t blocked, right? What does your daily writing habit look like on that day?

Here are five ways you can strategically continue to write a book when youโ€™ve had writerโ€™s block:

  1. Back up and start a scene from a different time and/or place
  2. Let a character fail during a scene
  3. In a scene between two characters, add a third character for triangulation
  4. Move the scene to a new, more resistant setting (location)
  5. Craft the scene from a different characterโ€™s point of view, or a third-person point of view

Once youโ€™ve made a choice, try it. But be prepared for it to possibly fail. Be ready with another idea or two in your pocket.

Strategy isnโ€™t just about the story itself; itโ€™s about readying yourself for a variety of outcomes, successful or not, so you donโ€™t end up blocked again.

Step 5: Return and Write With Freedom

The final step to overcoming writerโ€™s block when writing a book is to return and write with freedom.

Youโ€™ve stepped back and freed yourself from the shackles of impossible expectations and faulty rules.

Youโ€™ve take a restorative sabbatical and come out of it energized, filled with ideas about new strategic approaches to your storytelling problems.

The last thing to do, then, is to write.

The Secret to Overcoming Writer’s Block

See, overcoming writerโ€™s block isnโ€™t just about the story. Itโ€™s about the storyteller.

When done right, taking these steps builds muscle memory. Every time you conquer writerโ€™s block you get better at doing it. In fact, if you beat writerโ€™s block enough, youโ€™ll hardly ever feel truly โ€œblocked,โ€ but see the momentary hiccup in your process as just that: a minor nuisance that youโ€™re an expert at dealing with.

No one is ever truly, eternally afflicted with writerโ€™s block. The power is in your hands.

You can do it. You can write a book when youโ€™ve got writerโ€™s block, just like every professional writer out there.

You just have to know how.

What strategies do you use to overcome writer’s block? Let us know in the comments.

PRACTICE

Find a scene or a story you’ve already written. Read it.

Then, take fifteen minutes to write it again, but with a major change.

What can you change? Try one of these possibilities:

  • Start it in a different time or place
  • Let a character fail during the scene
  • Add another character to the scene
  • Write the scene from a different point of view

When you’re done, share your transformed scene in the practice box below and tell us what you changed. Then, leave feedback for your fellow writers on their transformed scenes as well!

Enter your practice here:

You deserve a great book. That's why David Safford writes adventure stories that you won't be able to put down. Read his latest story at his website. David is a Language Arts teacher, novelist, blogger, hiker, Legend of Zelda fanatic, puzzle-doer, husband, and father of two awesome children.

56
Share to...