COMMITMENT ISSUES

1. The author is working on too many projects to finish one. It’s far better to complete one manuscript than to go halfway on two. Most publishers won’t consider an unfinished novel manuscript from an inexperienced author.

2. The author is unwilling and/or unable to set time aside for writing. Alternately, perhaps the author sets aside a regular time, but is not consistent about actually using it. If you put aside one hour per day for writing, you can pretty easily write 1-2 pages. (Actually, I’d like to phrase that more confidently. If you can sit down for an hour and do nothing but write, you WILL write at least 1-2 pages. If you can do 1-2 pages a day, you will have a manuscript drafted within 6 months). If you’re writing at your computer, I’d recommend turning off the Internet because I find it tends to reduce productivity.

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Write or Die is one of my favorite tools to beat writer’s block.  It’s a website that pushes you to write by trying to hold you to a word-goal within a certain amount of time. On the most forgiving setting, it gives you friendly pop-ups reminding you to keep writing if you wait too long.   On “Kamikaze Commando,” it will slowly delete your words if you stop typing for too long.

If you’re a writer that has trouble completing first drafts, I’d recommend checking it out.  So far, I’ve written at least 275 words every time I sat down for 15 minutes.  (If you’re interested, you can read 30 minutes’ worth here).  At that rate, I’d have a first draft of a novel manuscript within roughly 70 hours or a comic book script within 5.

As always, I recommend just getting the first draft down and saving any concerns about smoothness, style, conciseness, coherence or anything else for the rewriting process.  Having a draft complete will make it vastly easier to rewrite because you’ll have a much better idea when you’re going.

Lisa Chow keeps writing “blah blah blah” until something better comes up.  ”It always does,” she says.

For more advice on beating writer’s block, please see this article and this one.

A lot of authors (especially me) sit down to type out a story but get distracted by websites a few minutes later.  The conventional solution is  writing with paper-and-pen.  But what if your writing could genuinely benefit from computer access (because of saved drafts, online references and such)?  Try RescueTime, a free program that you can use to block access to distracting websites for a certain amount of time.  For example, if you’ve decided to commit yourself to an hour of writing, do you really need Facebook or email or ESPN or LolCats during that time?  Probably not.  In addition, RescueTime allows you to make the block undoable.  If you decide to check out some LolCats during your hour of writing, too bad!  You’re already locked in for the hour.  Clearly they made this program with me in mind. 

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If you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month, here are some tips you might find helpful.

1.  Don’t ever tell yourself “that isn’t good enough.” You’re only writing a draft.  It doesn’t need to be perfect, or even readable– it’s just a draft!  Forget “that isn’t good enough.”  Let “save it for rewrite” be your mantra.

2.  Don’t get hung up on research.  In fact, I’d recommend against doing any research during the first draft of most fiction.  (If you’re writing historical fiction for publication, that’s definitely an exception).

3.  Remove any distractions from your writing space.  If you find that the computer itself is a distraction, try writing by hand.

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For Part 1, please go here.

1. Don’t stop to rewrite chapters until you’ve finished a rough draft of every chapter. Your first draft won’t be great—it definitely won’t be publishable—and that’s okay. At the time you’re first writing a particular chapter, it’s virtually impossible to make it publishably good because you won’t know the endpoint you’re building towards until you’ve gotten there. While an outline can help solve this problem by providing a map, outlines generally change quite a bit as the author actually writes the chapters—characters develop in unforeseen directions, plots are added or removed, characters may be added or removed, etc. It’s much easier to go back and make chapter 5 excellent after you’ve finished the first draft of the entire manuscript.

2. The most important thing is to keep writing. It’s okay if it’s not coherent or stylish—you can always fix that by rewriting later. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or publishable. Before you’ve finished the first draft, it almost assuredly won’t be.

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Here are a few tricks to help you keep writing after you get stuck.

1.  Switch problems. Writer’s block often sets after a hero has resolved a problem and it’s not clear where the story is headed.  Are there any problems left?  Could you introduce a new problem?

2.  Add a complication. Last chapter, it may have looked like the hero’s solution worked perfectly.  Well, that was last chapter.  What went wrong? For example, perhaps the hero inadvertently made a new enemy or the villain is quickly working to undo the hero’s action.

3. Switch solutions. Have your hero try to look at his problems in a new way.  Maybe he has to use ingenuity instead of brute force, or diplomacy instead of coercion, or careful planning rather than impulsiveness.  (Or vice versa).  For example, Heroes took away the characters’ powers from from time to time.

4.  Switch scenes. “Meanwhile, thousands of miles away…”  Moving the story very far will probably feel disjointed at first, but you can add a smoother transition after you determine where the story is going.

5.  Look at an important character in a new way. Perhaps there’s some aspect to your hero that could be developed more.  (Motivations? Personality? Key traits/flaws?  Where the character’s key traits/flaws came from? Background?)

6.  Give up on perfectionism. If you’re worried about being perfect, it will be very hard for you to start writing.  Don’t set ridiculously high standards for yourself on the first draft.  Think of the first draft as a scaffolding that you can build on rather than anything approaching the standards of the final product. (No one writes rough drafts that are good enough to publish).  It is much easier to write a few pages a day–even if they aren’t any good–and later rewrite them into something publishable.   One highly effective technique is to set aside 30-60 minutes each day to write a page or two.  You can use a free writing website like Write or Die to time you and give helpful reminders if you temporarily stop writing.  (If you averaged 400 words a day, you’d have a first draft of a novel manuscript ready within six months).

7.  Remove anything that distracts you from writing.  For example, if you’re typing away at your computer but find that you’re getting distracted, just turn off the Internet (or use a program like Write or Die that helps keep your focus).  If you’re spending too much time looking through notes or research, put them aside while you’re writing the first draft.

8.  If you’re truly desperate, consider throwing in a new antagonist or obstacle. This may reduce plot coherence, but the most important thing is to keep writing.  You can smooth out the connections later.

9.  If the plot has totally stalled, consider switching your angle. Sometimes, writers pick an angle because it’s conventional.  “I want to write about a magical university, so my story will be about a young wizard who studies there and eventually saves the world from great evil.”  Well, okay, but Harry Potter’s approach isn’t the only possibility.  What if you told a story about the teachers?  Or campus security? Or the admissions office?  Or the Ministry of Magic?  Or the bad guys?  Or the broom-flying instructors?  Or the headmaster?  Your story almost certainly has many such possibilities.  At the very least, any of these perspectives could add another chapter or character to help you develop your main character in a different direction.

Did you find this article helpful? If so, please check out How to Beat Writer’s Block, Part 2. Thanks!

Expecting perfection from the first draft will probably paralyze you. On the first draft, the most important thing is to write something and then you can turn it into a coherent, clean masterpiece later. When you’re writing the first draft, it may help to think of your job as giving your internal self-editor material to work with rather than writing a story fit for public consumption.

Here are a few suggestions to avoid perfectionist impulses during the first draft…

1) Don’t edit.

2) If you get stuck on what happens in one part of the story, summarize it in a few sentences and move on. You can fill it in later.

3) Commit yourself to writing for at least 30 or 45 minutes. After ten minutes of accomplishing little, you will hopefully start to feel frustrated and lower your expectations. “Maybe this line is good enough.”