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Famous writers on The Block

dondomat

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I'll start with Stephen King's months of nothing after The Stand:

"The Mist"? (Laughs) I answer these questions and I always sound totally mad, barking mad. There was a market, it is an actual market in Bridgeton, Maine, where my wife and I lived at that time. And I'd been blocked for some time. I'd written a very long novel called "The Stand," and I'd finished it. And I couldn't seem to get anything else going. And about four months went by and I would try things, and they would die, and uh, I'd crumple up pages, and the wastebasket was full of paper, and the desk was bare. It was that kind of a situation. It was a writer's block.

So I was in the market one day, and uh, I was shopping, and I looked toward the front, and I saw the whole front of the market was plate glass. And what I thought of when I saw those big plate glass windows was, "What if giant bugs started to fly into the glass." (Laughs)
 

dondomat

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Ha, excellent piece by old Fitz.
Here's a fictionalized thing by Peter Straub:

Then I made an aimless circuit of the kitchen. The book I had begun writing seemed to have locked me out, which I usually take to mean that it’s waiting for some other, younger author to come along and treat it right. It would be at least a day before I could face my desk again, and when I did I would probably have to dream up some other project.

Her Level Gaze had never been right for me, anyway. At heart, it was a tidy little story about a weak man and a woman like a jungle animal, and I had been dressing it up as a kind of postmodern love story. The book really should have been written by Jim Thompson sometime in the mid-fifties.

A grim, heavy tide of grief went through me again, and this time it seemed that I was mourning the death, the real death, of all my childhood and youth. I groaned out loud, baffled by what was happening to me. A treasure house of beauty and vitality, all of this drenched yet hard-edged sense of pleasure, sorrow, and loss, had vanished, been swept away, and I had barely noticed. My parents, my old neighborhood, my aunts and uncles, a whole era seemed to call out for me, or me for it, and in rapid succession, as if in a series of frames,
 

Deleted member 42

Here's one from Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, both of which won the Man Booker Prize.

Hilary Mantel said:
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to *music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.

[The Guardian, 25 February 2010]
 

dondomat

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Richard Laymon the great and powerful:

Here's a suggestion. If you can't get past the "What-The-Hell's-The-Use-Anyway" feelings, try reading.
Go to a book store and buy a few paperbacks that have recently been published in the area of your interest. Take them home. Read them...
And grin.
Because if you're a good writer yourself, you'll notice that the stuff you've just bought is not so good.
And you'll think, I can write better than this!
It's very encouraging to discover that much of what is being bought and published day in and day out is complete, utter, stinking crap.
The realization is liberating.
Knowing that so much crap is being published, you have absolutely no reason to be despondant about your chances of eventual success. (Many of our greatest books were written by people who picked up their pens for the first time after reading a piece of published junk and thinking, I can do better than that.)
All you need to do is vigorously, persistently write non-crap.
Of course, a great many editors aren't capable of distinguishing crap from non-crap, so the journey to success may be long and frustrating. But sooner or later, good material will be discovered and published. I'm certain of that.
Fairly certain.
/........../
A common problem is that you might be trying to start your story at the wrong point in time. Maybe you're trying to begin the tale too early—too many days or weeks before the
real conflict gets under way. No matter what genre you're writing in, the best place to begin is when the trouble starts. Begin telling your tale too early, and you might just be floundering around, trying to write scenes that serve little or no purpose. Begin with the trouble, and things should run smoothly.
If your plot doesn't have trouble, drop it. Because if you don't have trouble in your story, you don't have a story.
You may be surprised—and delighted—to discover how easily the words flow if you skip the preliminaries and start your tale at the moment the trouble first rears its head.
Another possible cure for difficulties in getting started on a new project is to change the point of view. Time and time again, I've had problems with a new novel until I realized that I was trying to tell it from the wrong viewpoint. Some stories might require third person viewpoints of multiple characters, while other stories might call for a first-person viewpoint. Sometimes, just realizing that you have to tell it in a very subjective first person voice instead of in third person can make all the difference—and clear away your writer's block.
You may be starting to tell your story at the right point in time, and using the best possible viewpoint, but then run into difficulties because you're planning to focus your plot on the wrong character. You run into the block because you know something isn't right— but you don't know what.
/...../
My suggestion to get past the block: ask yourself how the story might go if you made it happen to someone else. Play with the ages of your characters, their genders, their careers, special interests, etc. You may stumble onto a notion that will suddenly bring your story to life—and blast away your writer's block.
After you've decided that your story is starting at the best point in time, that you've found the right point of view and that you've selected a terrific cast of characters—something else may be still prevent you from getting started.
But you don't know what.
My advice is to sit down at your pad of paper, typewriter or keyboard and simply play around with your story. Don't try to write it. just toy with it.
Ask yourself what sort of events you envision taking place. Who does what to whom? What leads to what? Just fool around for a while and see what happens.
More than likely, you'll very quickly astound yourself by discovering what you want to do, where you want to go.
So then you immediately go to a new page, write "Chapter One," and have at it.
If all else fails, do what Hemingway said.
Begin your story by writing one true sentence. Then follow it with another. And keep adding sentences. Don't worry about where they are taking you—just follow them. Soon, you'll find yourself telling a story.
If you run into a block in the midst of a project, you should stop and think. Somewhere nearby, you probably took a wrong turn. You made something happen that shouldn't have happened. You had the wrong character do something. You forgot to put in a necessary scene. You're letting the plot bog down.
Or you're about to head off in a bad direction and the block is trying to warn you off.
All you need to do is identify the problem, find the better way to go, and go there. You'll leave the block behind.
In many cases, writer's block is actually your friend. It warns you of something wrong about the story you're writing or about to write.
All you need to do is determine the source of the problem.
I can think of at least three writers who used the 'I can do better than this' motivation mentioned by Laymon to succeed: Shaun Hutson (vs the likes of Guy N Smith and James Herbert), Dan Brown (vs the likes of Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum), and Edgar Rice Burroughs (vs early 20th century adventure magazine tales). According to his own good-humored recollections of his youthful arrogance, Brian Aldiss wrote his first novel to show Robert Heinlein how it's done.
 
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dondomat

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Neil Gaiman on the block and it's possible uses to procrastinate:

If you’re going to write, ignore your inner critic, while you’re writing. Do whatever you can to finish. Know that anything can be fixed later.
Remember: you don’t have to be brilliant when you start out. You just have to write. Every story you finish puts you closer to being a writer, and makes you a better writer.
Blaming “Writer’s Block” is wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the “block”. It gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy.
But it’s probably more honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting Stuck. If you’re being lazy, don’t be. If you’re being a perfectionist, don’t be. And if you’re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make it work, and then start writing again.
 

dondomat

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Robert McCammon and Al Sarrantonio on writing and the block:

McCammon: I think that it's a wonderful profession. I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing---I can't think of anything I could do, besides writing. But I think there comes a point when you're writing, if you have a problem with your book, you're really alone, because nobody can help you.



Sarrantonio: That's great in a way---it's kind of invigorating. It's hard but it's invigorating because you have to solve it yourself. I don't know about you, but when I hit "the wall," I pace. I have a place in the house where I pace back and forth. It may take two hours, and then maybe I'll sleep on it, but sooner or later you break through the wall. Because it's your job. The ones who have no patience for it anymore are the ones who whine about, "I'm writing and now I have writer's block and now I just don't feel like it." When it's your job, you do it. And you find a way to get through the wall.



McCammon: Do you find that you come up with these solutions, whether you realize it or not? These things kind of happen. I wonder why that is?



Sarrantonio: It's a very mysterious process, I think.



McCammon: You know, you get the questions like "How do you come up with your ideas?" How can you answer that? That's one of those things you can't answer.



Sarrantonio: What was it Stephen King said? Utica, New York? "I get them in the mail from Utica, New York." I haven't been able to top that one....



McCammon: You can't tell. "How do you learn to write?"



Sarrantonio: What I tell them is, "You have ten years to put aside, and you do nothing else. You just keep pounding the typewriter like a monkey, and sooner or later it'll start making sense."
 

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Raymond Chandler and a diet of straight alcohol:

George Marshall, the director, had begun shooting. They were progressing ahead of schedule when, around the middle of the fourth week, "a faint chill of alarm invaded the studio when the script girl pointed out that the camera was rapidly gaining on the script". The problem was simple: Ray (Chandler) had no ending. He hadn't worked out who was responsible for the murder. Paramount, the studio, were so worried about the lack of a complete script that they offered Chandler a payment of $5,000 if the final page was delivered on time. This offer only succeeded in further disturbing the nervous writer. His "sense of security was completely shattered", Houseman says.
The next morning Chandler and Houseman had a meeting, at which the author, looking grim, made an "astonishing" proposal. He said he was a "serious drinker" but by an effort of will had overcome his addiction and was now abstinent. And this was the trouble. Alcohol gave him "an energy and a self-assurance that he could not achieve in any other way". He could not finish The Blue Dahlia sober. But he could finish it, at home – drunk. And he outlined a plan whereby he'd drink steadily, eat no solid food and subsist on glucose injections from his doctor. He gave Houseman a sheet of foolscap with his basic "logistical requirements":
A. Two Cadillac limousines, to stand day and night outside the house with drivers available for:
1. Fetching the doctor (Ray's or [his wife] Cissy's or both).
2. Taking script pages to and from the studio.
3. Driving the maid to market.
4. Contingencies and emergencies.
B. Six secretaries – in three relays of two – to be in constant attendance and readiness, available at all times for dictation, typing, and other possible emergencies.
C. A direct line open at all times, to my office by day and the studio switchboard at night.
Houseman thought about it for half an hour and decided he had to take the risk, calculating that if production closed down everyone would be out of a job anyway:
Ray now became extremely happy and exhilarated. It was almost noon, and he suggested, as proof of my faith in him and of my confidence in the efficacy of our scheme, that we drive to the most expensive restaurant in Los Angeles and tie one on together immediately. We left the studio in Ray's open Packard and drove to Perino's where I watched him down three double martinis before eating a large and carefully selected lunch, followed by three double stingers. I then drove the Packard, with Ray in it, back to his house, where the two Cadillacs were already in position and the first relay of secretaries at their posts.
The next day Houseman goes to see how his script-writer is getting on. He finds Ray lying passed out on the sofa with a tall, half-filled highball glass of bourbon sitting on the table and next to it three typed pages of script, neatly corrected. Houseman looks at the manuscript and finally learns the identity of the murderer. Shooting is finished in eight days and the Hollywood Reporter hails the picture as a "kick-'em-in-the-teeth-hit".
During those eight days, "Chandler did not draw one sober breath, nor did one speck of solid food pass his lips". The doctor came twice a day to give him an intravenous shot and, except when he was asleep, Chandler was "never without a glass in his hand". Not surprisingly, it took him a month to recover.
 

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Robert Silverberg:

What do you think, I’m some kind of freak who never has periods when he just can’t seem to get words on paper? I’m human, you know. Just last week I had a really scary episode of writer’s block that lasted from about 10:45 in the morning almost till lunch.
 

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Frank Herbert:

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing. for example. or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two.

As quoted in Shoptalk: learning to write with writers edited by Donald Morison Murray, Cook Publishers, 1990.
 

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There's a sub-set of writer's block wherein the writer has successfully written in the past, wants to write now, and may even have a subject, but neither the ideas or the words come; sometimes this is a sign that your brain and heart and muse are working on things and you will be able to write soon—but you might need to write something else, or go for a walk. This isn't procrastination as much as a way of letting your brain work something out.

This particular form of block is often experienced by poets, though it's hardly limited to them.

Here's Sir Phillip Sidney in the first of his Astrophil and Stella sonnets discussing the issue, and offering his solution:

Sidney Astrophil and Stella 1 said:
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Sidney's solution, provided by the muse, is to "look in the heart, and write," that is, write true; worry less about clothing the words in appropriate literary figures ("Studying inventions fine,) or looking to the words of others ("Oft turning others' leaves . . .").

Shakespeare too wrote about this dilemma; the necessity to write, to produce, but the temporary inability to formulate thoughts and feelings into words; see, for instance, the desire of Bendict in Much Ado About Nothing to compose a sonnet and thereby woo Beatrice:

Benedict said:
The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,--
I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for, 'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

Like Sidney's Astrophil, Benedict struggles with the words to express his feelings; he despairs that despite his strong emotions, "Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried" and finally concludes "I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms."

Benedict's problem, like that of Sidney and many writers is that they have an idea about which to write, the words simply won't come. Sidney sets his block firmly in the context of "Invention":

Sidney said:
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

Invention, or inventio, is the first step in terms of Classical rhetorical theory. First, you must invent, that is produce ideas, images, thoughts about what to write (or say). Sidney turned to the works of others to provide ideas, but finds that that effectively shut down his ability to invent his own lines—"other's feet (with a pun on metrical feet) seemed but strangers in my way"—the feet, or lines, of other poets served to block him further, causing him to metaphorically stumble.

But his Muse reminds him: ""Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

That is, write what you feel, write true (you can clothe it in inventions fine later). This is in some sense what we do when we change the context of writing—instead of simply staring at the WIP, try another tactic. Perhaps free writing, or switching to paper and pen and simply writing what you think or feel without pre-processing it will help start Invention again.
 
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dondomat

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Dan Simmons suggest anticipating the revisions:

As you reconsider your paper, you might rewrite major sections of it, shuffle your organization, combine or split sentences, delete tangents, etc. The revision process should take much longer than the writing process. Once you internalize the idea of revision, the writing process becomes far more efficient. If you have writer’s block, anticipating a thorough revision can help you overcome it; there’s no need to fret over each wording choice in your draft if you will be revising it later
 

dondomat

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The mighty Dwight Swain:

On the surface, Writer shrugs it off. But a knot begins to tighten in his belly.
Finally, one day, he sits down at the typewriter—and no words come.
Why?
Because, without even being aware of it, Writer suddenly has become critical of his own work.
You can’t be both creative and critical at the same time. They’re opposing forces. Catch a writer between them, and they tear him apart.
And that gives us our first rule: Separate creative impulse from critical judgment.
How do you do this?
The first and most essential step is to recognize the human tendency to attempt to mix the two.
Then, walk wide around it.
To that end, adopt a working rule of “Create now . . . correct later:” Promise yourself the privilege of being as critical as you like, as soon as the first draft of a scene or story is completed.
Until the draft is done, however, stick with impulse. Let yourself go in a heat of passion. Forget the rules. For as Balzac said, “If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtius flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy’s trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one . . . he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.”
Face up to your fears.
 
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dondomat

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Terry Brooks, in his book on writing Sometimes the Magic Works;
I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer’s block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer’s block. I think writer’s block is God’s way of telling you one of two things—that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends. In the latter instance, God frequently speaks to me through Judine. In the former, listen to this voice of reason as it whispers in your ear. Hssst! If you want to avoid writing yourself into the box of dead ends or out into the desert of poor ideas or off into the wilderness of ill-considered plot choices, an outline will help!
 

dantefrizzoli

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outwitting writers block.

Just start saying whats on your mind. Going with it. then developing the confusion and questions into your story.
 

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Terry Brooks, in his book on writing Sometimes the Magic Works;

Some years ago I saw Terry Brooks on a panel at a writers' conference in which was discussed this very topic. Brooks is a true-believer fanatic about outlining. He outlines in meticulous detail everything he ever writes. Perhaps his background as a corporate attorney has contributed to this view, I don't know.

But also on the panel was John Saul, who is a complete seat-of-the-pants writer. It was a great discussion.

As regards the value of outlining to defeat "writer's block," I'm skeptical. For some it might work, for others . . . even here at AW we've had many threads from people hung up on "planning" and never getting doodlysquat actually written.

caw
 

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Got this from the randomhouse.com website. It's by P.D. James who sadly passed away within this last week, so I thought it was timely:

"When asked if she gets writer's block, James said "No, I have never experienced writer's block, although I sometimes have to wait a long time before I receive inspiration for the next book….By writing prose and learn from the experience, you will develop your own style."

Not that I'm a mystery fan but she was great at plot twists.

My own observation…Write…every day. Even if you think it's crap, keep it. You'll never know when you might want it again. ;)
 

GraemeTollins

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Writers' block, so far for me, means a few things.

Lazy? Get off your arse.
Afraid? Man up. Get off your arse.
No time? Then it's not important to you. Just quit. If it is important, make time and get off your arse.
More pressing things going on in your life? Attend to them, and then get off your arse.

No pointers to anyone else. This is how I treat myself, because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I love writing and that it makes me happy and fills me when I push through. I hate my own excuses. I don't let them define me.
 

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Still one of my favorite quotes from King's On Writing:

"Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."


Sometimes going on does mean doing shoddy work and tossing it out later, as that Mist story shows, but I think staying busy is a part of the process. Eventually, that kink will work itself out, like a knot in a muscle. Reading that is reassuring though; 4 months is a long time to stay blocked.
 

dondomat

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It happens that most of the anecdotes about Balzac pertain to his productive period, and present him to us in his white friar’s dress, getting out of bed at midnight to work, in a darkened room, three weeks at a sitting. The open-air Balzac, as we may call it, has been little commemorated. White Dominican robes, darkened rooms, deep potations of coffee, form the staple of M. Gozlan’s reminiscences. Every man works as he can and as he must; and if, in order to write the “Parents Pauvres,” Balzac had had to dress himself in a bearskin, we trust he would not have hesitated.
Henry James on Balzac

An illustration of the "whatever it takes" principle. You need to start at 2 at night and wear a boar-skin loincloth to be able to perform as a writer? Then get that loincloth :D

 
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Mark Twain on writer's block:

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”