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  • 2 Tricks for Breaking Writer’s Block in One Day

    Last week I talked to a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile who’s writing a memoir. She told me she was having a lot of trouble with it—she can’t make herself write about a particular incident she seriously needs to write about.

    She asked me if I had any advice: does she need a class? a group? a coach?

    Now, I do this kind of work with writers all the time, helping them write what they need to write when they need to write it, so, yeah, I had some advice for her. And I’ll give it to you too, in case you’re ever up against a similar block.

    Groups and classes can help if all you need is a little peer pressure to get yourself in gear, but they can make it worse if you’re really struggling with an emotional block and find yourself embarrassed to be unable to break through, especially in front of others. So before you invest in anything try these two tricks:

    1. Permission

      Give yourself permission to pause and write about this issue whenever it strikes you, even if it’s only a couple of lines between work projects that you can go back to and develop later.

    2. Details

      Whenever you do have a chunk of time in which you’d like to write, focus first on recording some concrete, neutral, unrelated details—what you had for lunch, the view from where you’re sitting, some conversation you had recently—to kind of grease the writing wheels so the words will come out of you more easily.

    Frequently it’s the effort to make two transitions at once (the transition into writing mode plus the transition into a safe emotional space) that can cause this kind of writer’s block, and it helps to take them one at a time.

    Remember: you’re writing what you write not to bind yourself ever-more tightly in your painful emotional paralysis, but to free yourself so you can live this one life you get as fully as humanly possible.

    NEXT WEEK: 3 Tricks for Ratcheting Tension in One Day

    THE WEEK AFTER: 4 Tricks for Improving Your Fiction in One Day

    FINALLY: 1 Secret Trick to Becoming a Genius Writer in One Day

    Note: I’m offline for the rest of August. That’s right—three whole weeks incognito. I’m working on my second book on writing, The Art & Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual, to be released September 30.

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    4 Comments

4 Responses to “2 Tricks for Breaking Writer’s Block in One Day”

  1. M.E. Anders said on August 10th, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    Thanks for the tips to break through the writer’s block on those difficult scenes. Though I have not faced a block when writing those tough scenes, I do feel emotionally wrung out afterwards. It helps for me to take a walk around the neighborhood and listen to some uplifting music.

    Have fun being offline!

  2. Victoria said on August 10th, 2011 at 3:52 pm

    Yes, our emotional investment in powerful scenes can be both liberating and debilitating.

    Just like so much of our writing lives!

  3. » 3 Tricks for Ratcheting Tension in One Day | A. Victoria Mixon, Editor said on August 15th, 2011 at 11:23 am

    [...] learning to write well starts the instant you learn it. What a fabulous craft! Last week we learned 2 Tricks for Breaking Writer’s Block in One Day. Now for the rest of the month we’ll be talking about other tricks that also work in one [...]

  4. » 1 Secret Trick to Becoming a Genius Writer in One Day | A. Victoria Mixon, Editor said on August 29th, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    [...] a bad thing to be, at all. . .but it’s not the same thing. We’ve talked about 2 Tricks for Breaking Writer’s Block in One Day. And 3 Tricks for Ratcheting Tension in One Day. And 4 Tricks for Improving Your Fiction in One [...]

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MILLLICENT G. DILLON, the world's expert on authors Jane and Paul Bowles, has won five O. Henry Awards and been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner. I worked with Dillon on her memoir, The Absolute Elsewhere, in which she describes in luminous prose her private meeting with Albert Einstein to discuss the ethics of the atomic bomb.

BHAICHAND PATEL, retired after an illustrious career with the United Nations, is now a journalist based out of New Dehli and Bombay, an expert on Bollywood, and author of three non-fiction books published by Penguin. I edited Patel’s debut novel, Mothers, Lovers, and Other Strangers, published by PanMacmillan.

LUCIA ORTH is the author of the debut novel, Baby Jesus Pawn Shop, which received critical acclaim from Publisher’s Weekly, NPR, Booklist, Library Journal and Small Press Reviews. I have edited a number of essays and articles for Orth.

SCOTT WARRENDER is a professional musician and Annie Award-nominated lyricist specializing in musical theater. I work with Warrender regularly on his short stories and debut novel, Putaway.

STUART WAKEFIELD is the #1 Kindle Best Selling author of Body of Water, the first novel in his Orcadian Trilogy. Body of Water was 1 of 10 books long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize. I edited his second novel, Memory of Water and look forward to editing the final novel of his Orcadian Trilogy, Spirit of Water.

ANIA VESENNY is a recipient of the Evelyn Sullivan Gilbertson Award for Emerging Artist in Literature and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I edited Vesenny's debut novel, Swearing in Russian at the Northern Lights.

TERISA GREEN is widely considered the foremost American authority on tattooing through her tattoo books published by Simon & Schuster, which have sold over 45,000 copies. Under the name M. TERRY GREEN, she writes her techno-shaman sci-fi/fantasy series. I am working with her to develop a new speculative fiction series.

CHRIS RYAN drew acclaim from the New Yorker for the hook to his novel Heliophobia. He is the author of poetry collection The Bible of Animal Feet from Farfalla Press. I edited Ryan’s debut novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him to develop Heliophobia and his work-in-progress Pogue.

JUDY LEE DUNN is an award-winning marketing blogger. I am working with her to develop and edit her memoir of reconciling her liberal activism with her emotional difficulty accepting the lesbianism of her beloved daughter, Tonight Show comedienne Kellye Rowland.

In addition, I work with dozens of aspiring writers in their apprenticeship to this literary art and craft.


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