asked on Hubpages by khmazz
I am currently writing my first novel and I am stuck right in the middle. I have a little over 30,000 words written and I have found myself unable to let words flow when I sit at my computer to write. Any ideas?
See what other authors said or add in your own advice here…
Edit (3/27/13 @ 8:42 am): Thank you everyone for your wonderful feedback and help! I have slowly overcome my struggle with writer’s block and have been posting some of my babble here and there. I will be sure to keep you posted on any news with my novel (which I still have not picked up yet, but have been brain storming some great ideas for new chapters to come!) Thanks again everyone!!! And keep the advice coming! I love this open dialog that has formed! 🙂
Posted in: My Blurbs
Kristen Hope Mazzola 
brickhouse101
April 16, 2013
good luck on your novel
Kristen Mazzola
April 16, 2013
Thanks love 🙂
johnconnacht
April 16, 2013
Read/watch/listen to something that is truly awful to build up your confidence 🙂
Or read/watch/listen to something different to get a better idea or reinforce the current one.
Most of all, just keep writing for yourself, even if its gobbledigook. Your posts prove you’ve got talent.
Jim Brennan
April 17, 2013
Writers will tell you that writing doesn’t happen at the desk in front of the computer screen with fingers on the keyboard. Writing happens in life. Whenever I’m stuck, I go for a run. If you are not a runner, you can get the same effect from walking, gardening or cooking. It may not come right away, but it will come.
Steve
April 18, 2013
Working as a newspaper reporter, where you have daily deadlines, taught me how to sit down at a keyboard and begin to write immediately. When you have a deadline in only an hour, you are forced to spit the words out as rapidly as possible. That ability has carried over into my daily writing. So, a possible suggestion would be to impose deadlines on yourelf. Tell yourself you have to have that next scene written by 5:00 today.
Another thought is, if you don’t know where your story is going, spend some time daydreaming. With journalism, you’re merely reporting facts. With fiction, you’re creating something out of nothing. If you’re stuck, it sounds like you don’t know where your story is heading. Best way to figure that out is to spend your alone time, whether it’s when you’re in bed at night or driving to the gym, imagining what happens next in your story. What do people say and do? Imagine their conversations, their actions. Play it all out in your head beforehand, so when you sit down later at the keyboard, you already have a good idea what is going to happen.
Something else to consider is to map out your plot. If you’re not sure what to write, you haven’t thought out your story. Create a rough outline of where your story is going. It doesn’t have to be anything detailed. Keep it simple. I’ll write down a sentence of what I want to happen step by step through the story. Later each of those sentences will get fleshed out into a chapter. When you have a plan, it’s easier to sit down and write.
Hope some of this helps.
josephjameshunter
April 18, 2013
Try doing a free-write: start with an opening and just write for five minutes straight; no pause, no punctuation, no concern for structure etc
Just get something down on paper.
Or you could write about writer’s block.
Check out the song Brain Candle by Cave in.
sknicholls
April 18, 2013
I agree with most other posters…sometimes you just need to walk away from it for a while and put it on the back burner, take a walk, go out and do something fun. Then, Like JosephJamesHunter says….your thoughts will begin to flow again. I can’t sit at a computer and type for days. I find myself absorbed in other activities when the thoughts begin to flow and I find myself jotting down whole paragraphs and sentences that start new ideas or topics in my books. I scribble them down on anything that I can find and toss them onto my desk. Finally, when I sit down to my computer again, it all starts coming together, the pieces are put together like a jigsaw puzzle and the whole begins to make sense.
sandradan1
April 19, 2013
I find a long walk with a coffee shop at the end of it, then 30 minutes of writing longhand in my notebook [sometimes I have no subject in mind, others I might take an exercise to do which is connected with my book in some way], then a long walk back home again. The walk seems the crucial element, somehow it is mind-emptying. Thanks for liking ‘If books were real, Elizabeth Bennet…’ on my blog. Sandra
noirfifre
April 19, 2013
I know you posted this a little over a month ago but here is an interesting/helpful article about writer’s block:
http://candicefoxauthor.com/2013/04/10/over-the-wall/
rockhouse54.wordpress.com
April 20, 2013
i treat good ole blockage as if i am a snow plow and stuck at a snowbank in front of me, so i back up the plow and ram the snowbank if that doesnt i just back and ram until it breaks. so i keep re-reading the part stuck at until the miracle happens or i close books and take the day off come back and is right in the writing world, and if this fails i just fall back and puch kick. keep writing!
seekingstories
April 22, 2013
Best of vibes to you during this endeavor, I feel like you just gotta keep going even if it means taking a break and writing something else for a bit. You’d be surprised how quickly you can find yourself writing something that fits into the novel again.
micheleburstein
April 22, 2013
I agree with Steve – daydreaming – sending your mind into the world of your novel and then picturing who or what can lead to the next conflict that will carry the story along – is a great idea. All fiction, whether comedic, tragic or somewhere in-between, is based on conflict. Imagine, as you lie relaxed, somewhere comfortable, eyes closed, who could hate who and for what. Create scenarios in your head, using your characters, perhaps throw in a new character, someone from the past perhaps, someone who shares a terrible secret with the lead character… I’m sure you get my drift. Dreaming and day-dreaming have created all the fiction I’ve completed, both novels and my short stories.
I hope you soon have a wonderful idea and can full-steam ahead with your creation!
mreuther
April 22, 2013
Write fast.Don’t think. Remember. Revision comes later.
Shainbird
April 23, 2013
Hi Kristen, when I hit a bump in the road, I take a break, away from my surroundings, even if I just go sit outside and smell the fresh air. Even when the smallest, seemingly insignificant idea comes to me, I take it like it was a GPS directing me where to go. Sometimes there is a destination and other times I could be lost. But not one word written is ever wasted, perhaps erased but never wasted. Good luck! Thanks for stopping by my post and liking my words.
Karen Nicole Smith
April 24, 2013
Thanks for liking my post on Teresa Caputo. For writers block my suggestion would be cardio exercise – even a good, brisk walk. I find I exercise sharpens my mind so much. I get a lot of great ideas when I exercise. It creates some of my best problem-solving time!
Kindle Stories
April 25, 2013
Thanks for liking my Willful Women site. When I need to be creative, I start using my left hand for everything (TV remote, brushing my teeth, preparing a meal, you name it), It fires the neurons of the right side of the brain, the creative half. It works. 😉
I Over E
May 2, 2013
I find that creativity comes in bursts which last between 14 and 21 days at a time and which strike about once every 2 or 3 months. Trying to create outside of these creative bursts has proven counterproductive for me. Even during these periods, though, if I’m hit with writer’s block, I stop writing immediately. If I don’t “feel” it, then whatever I produce tends to be significantly inferior. I would suggest just waiting it out and doing something else until the creativity strikes again.
christina m janz
May 3, 2013
Hi Kristen, I am also a writer revising my first 2 manuscripts.I recently spoke to a children’s author on this topic. She said writer’s block is aften one of 2 things. Either the story has gone on a tangent and you need to look back to a place where you can pick up the real thread of the story and go on, orthe main character is weak and not reacting to the events in a fulfilling manner.
What she does then is to keep a character diary–an journal the ‘character writes’ in order to really get to know them, their thoughts, fears, strengths, etc.
For my part, when writing my first novel, anytime I got stuck, I would stop and mind map, or brain storm. Blank sheet of paper. Choose a main word, a theme word, or whatever you’re stuck on and write that on the middle of the page. Circle it, surround it with “spiderlegs” and at the end of each leg write a word or phrase that the center word makes you think of. then do it again for as many of those as you can.
Just free-write. Often 1 or more ideas immerge that offer potential.
Or you can get a good plotting workbook, work through it and voila! I recommend “The Plot Whisperer” and/or Ready-Set-Novel”
Good luck.—Christina, dragonflydithers.wordpress.com
J. C. Conway
May 15, 2013
You’ve got a lot of good advice here. The way I see it, you get to a point where you’ve set something up and it feels full and interesting, and then you start seeing the flaws in where you want to go with it. You need something better, something that is worthy of what you’ve started, and it’s scary to proceed at that point with very real risk that you will mess it up from here on out. So any of the ideas shared here work. I personally give myself permission to screw it up. Just write. Or skip ahead and write something cool that would happen later on. In those little pieces, new ideas come, and your mind works to either (a) get there, or (b) see that you can’t get there for the story you want to write, and then something else starts to percolate. But most importantly, it’s totally okay if you mash your manuscript from here. That’s what revisions are for. And until you get yourself through to where you think the story is going you will not know whether that is actually where it ought to be, or if you’re going to go somewhere else with a story that’s been behind the scenes of your conscious mind up to now.