BLOOD ON YOUR FOREHEAD
The American author, Gene Fowler, once said that writing a book is easy. “All you need to do is to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood appear on your forehead.”
Many writers, from first time novelists to authors who have written many books, sometimes come to their desks to begin the day’s work, and feel that they just can’t do any more creative thinking or writing. It’s not necessarily that they’ve finished their work, but that their imaginations seem to have disappeared. They began the book with an enormous flourish of creativity and enthusiasm, but now that they’re a quarter or half way into the story, they’ve dried up. Perhaps they’re bored with the characters, or the things they’re describing, or the way the book is turning out. And that sense of frustration is the poison of creativity.
Some authors call it ‘Writer’s Block’. But the true is that there’s no such thing as writer’s block. All it means is that you’re writing the wrong book because it no longer holds your interest, or it’s the right book at the wrong time….or that you need an injection of enthusiastic creativity.
One way to overcome lack of enthusiasm, is to distance yourself from the work. Do something else for a week or two….research your next book, or read deeper into the research for the one you’re currently writing…..but regardless, separate yourself from your work for a span of time; then go back to your book, and read it from the beginning. You’ll probably find as you begin to re-read the story, that the initial enthusiasm you had for it when you wrote the first words will come flooding back and reinvest the story-so-far with new vigor.
Another way is to hit Google’s search engine, and read around the subject about which you’ve chosen to write. Go to Wikipedia and read broadly around the topic which is at the centre of your book. See how other authors or journalists or historians have approached the subject; then think back over the difference in your approach to theirs….it’s probably that which gave you the initial purpose for writing your book.
A third way of reinvigorating your book with the initial enthusiasm you had for it at Chapter One, is to go back to the synopsis you wrote about how the story will unfold. Now that you’re part-way through telling the story, re-read the synopsis carefully. Does it tell you the way the book is currently going, or the way in which you now want it to go….having written an amount of the book which will have taken its own plot and character twists and turns? How different is the book now from the synopsis you wrote at the beginning. Ask yourself why? Was it because as you started to write the book, your research found new angles you hadn’t known before……or new characters which can invest the book with a deeper meaning?
And if all or any of these techniques don’t work, then perhaps it’s time to accept that you’re not suffering from writer’s block….but you’re writing the wrong book for you. If so, you could soldier-on for another six or more months and then consign the entire book to the trash can…..or you could bite the bullet now, press delete, and save all that ultimate time and frustration.
But before you delete your book, put it away for a month or so, and then make the decision. Remember that it took JRR Tolkien 17 years to write The Lord of the Rings, and nobody knows how often he considered writing something different.
