Questions: on moving forward

Kristin asked:

I am trying to do the seventy days of sweat with sven, but I have just hit a wall…I have not written in about 3 days. What do you do to get back in the saddle? Besides “just write”?

Unfortunately, that’s the only answer I have. If you ever find a better one, please do let me know! I’m dying for a magic trick!

I used to not believe in writer’s block. I thought if you were serious about writing, you just did it. Later on in my development, I believed that writer’s block is a symptom that something is wrong with your story. When you’re stuck, it means that you’re making a mistake with your plot, or your characterization, or etc. Some of my friends say that writer’s block is a writer letting her internal editor get the better of her.

I think it’s can be all three. Sometimes, when I’m stuck, I just have to put my butt in a chair and do it. Set a timer and say I can’t do anything else until that timer goes off. Can’t do anything but stare at a blank screen or sheet of paper. It’s amazing how a lack of distraction can get those sentences coming. Other times, I go back and try to figure out what I’m doing wrong. (This is probably my most common approach.) As soon as I figure out what I was doing wrong, I come unstuck. And then sometimes I follow my friends’ advice and just “give myself permission to write crap.” (I think that line might be Nora’s, but I don’t think she uses “crap.”)

A few other things that help:
1. Change the medium. Write on a computer? Try longhand. The very act of using different muscles and nerves might jiggle your neurons awake.
2. Change the setting. Write in your office? Grab a pad of paper and head outside. Try under a tree or near a coffee shop. I really like to write on the metro. The other day I hadn’t written in several days and I got on the metro and words started pouring out and I wrote eight pages. True story.
3. Play some music which makes you think of a particular scene.
4. Take a shower. I swear this works.
5. Give yourself a writing prompt. Say you must put something particular in your next two pages — like the word “indubitably” or a spork. You can edit it out later, of course, but sometimes forcing your mind to think about something particular that isn’t a plot point can help you move forward. It’s the same principle which guides creative writing teachers: when you say “write” people won’t be creative, but if you say “write about purple mushroom caps” you’ll get a dozen different stories.

Of course, all of these are variations on the theme of “just write.”

Anyone else have a method?