#pretendpanel Jan 10

[r_a_young]

I'm currently in the best place to answer this, having just broken through a 6 year old writer's block.

Here's the generic advice that worked for me:

1) Don't hold it against yourself.

You're in the flow, you're making words, and then bam! you're halfway through a sentence and the second half doesn't exist anywhere, not even in your brain. Of course you'd be annoyed.

Only spend that moment being annoyed, and then give yourself some grace. Holding it against yourself won't make the words come, and doesn't give you energy/space for 2 and 3.

2) The characters know better.

Usually, if the characters are the ones putting the block, I definitely trust them. Why? That kind of block means that you're not writing based on their history within the fic. So you'll have to go back and check what's up in terms of the character - are they in the wrong environment? Was that the wrong time for that remark, and what's a better time to say it? (I rarely throw dialogue - if it came to me, that has its own reasons.)

To bring up the example on Jan 6, my MC was supposed to escape and hand over her evidence to the police. The MC didn't wanna, and I got writer's block.

I went back and reread, and found that the beef between the MC and the villain warranted a throw down between them. That's how the writer's block got broken.

3) Sometimes it's not a story thing solved by writing.

The six year writer's block included the pandemic. 'Nuff said.