Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Writer's block

Like any aspiring writer, I've run into my share of writer's block. I've found several general cures for it.
  1. Edit. Maybe your brain needs a break. Edit some other part of the story. This can give you a chance to refresh.
  2. Skip. Write a note or a comment and move further down the story. You may find you didn't need the part that you were blocking on, or that a solution suggests itself from the part of story you develop. I'll often use ALL CAPITALS or a C++ comment \\ (my husband's idea) to delimit a block of incomplete text. I'll deleted the comments when I've addressed them.
  3. Write. Write something else. It can be another story, a study of a character, or an outline for more of what you're writing.
  4. Read. Do some of your background research. For example, with the civil war romance I'm working on, I needed to know things like: the names of the railroad companies, what is the difference between Southern and Northern track gauges, or was HIHI still a laugh in American Morse code.
  5. Exercise. (Exorcise?) Go do something else that isn't connected with writing.

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