Perfectionist's Guide: How to Overcome Writer's Block

What causes writer's block? There are countless reasons why the words have stopped flowing, the muses have quieted, and you've been staring at your work for hours without ever touching your keyboard. Trust me, I understand the feeling of wanting to beat your head against your keyboard because at least then something will be on the page. I can't talk about every single reason and cause of writer's block, because a lot of them depend on who you are as a person and your particular circumstances. However, many people agree that writer's block has a few root causes, so I'll talk about those (since you came all this way and everything).

Here are 4 common causes of writer's block and how to overcome them:

#1 - Burnout is a big and repeat offender. You've been chugging along, steadily making progress, and then suddenly, bam! You just can't anymore. Now you're confused because you were doing fine up until this point. What gives?! Chances are, you've been pulling from your muse without feeding it. Creativity isn't an endless well or a bottomless cup, from which you can pull amazing ideas and effortless prose. It's just a regular, ol' bucket. It requires filling after a while. You have to consume art in order to produce art. A writer must read, not just to learn, but also to feed their muse.

Unfortunately, there is no quick three-step process to recover from burnout. You've spent a lot of time working up to it, you'll have to spend a good chunk of time working yourself back out. But do not despair! There is still hope. The best way to recover from burnout is to take a break. Put the project aside for a few days to weeks, if you can. Don't so much as think about working on it. Instead, spend that time you'd normally use on writing on other things. One of the best uses of this extra time is reading. Study other people's work and enjoy the craft that you, yourself, are working in. You can also watch TV shows or movies or even play video games. Really, anything with characters and plot can still be "useful" to further your writing, even when you do no actual writing. Nextflix and chill isn't being lazy, it's studying. (wink, wink)

"But what about NaNoWriMo? I can't just take a break during that," I'm sure you're probably thinking. (If not don't look at me, I'm not a mind reader XD.) If you haven't been writing much or at all before November, burnout may not be the cause of your writer's block. Burnout happens over several weeks to months of work, so if the words have stopped during NaNo, the reasons listed below are more likely culprits. But if you have been writing in the months leading up to November, and you think you've got burnout, do not despair, you have options.

Taking a break is still my best piece of advice, even if it's just for an evening or two. Your word count can always be made up after you've gotten your second wind, but trying to push through may result in you never getting back up to steam and staying behind for the rest of the month. If taking a break isn't feasible for you, try joining a local or virtual write-in, sprint with fellow writers, or talk about your book and what might be making it harder for you to get words on the page. Joining a community of like-minded individuals who are going through the same experiences as you can be a great way to push through burnout.

#2 - You're listening to your perfectionist gremlin. When everything feels like it has to be perfect or there can be no mistakes, it can be really hard to start writing. I often wrestle with my own perfectionist gremlin (who I have named Josh after a rather annoying classmate in high school). Especially after I read a particularly well-written book or watch something with a really tight plot, I feel the old, reliable imposter syndrome peek its unwanted head up from the dark corner of my mind. I'll think, "there's no way I can make a story on par with that" or "my characters don't feel as real as that". All of which can be translated to me feeling like a fraud or that my work will never be good enough. But I have found that during these times, I've lost sight of one very important fact; my work in progress doesn't have to be as good as the masterpiece I've just consumed, because it's still a work in progress. The only thing it has to do is exist.

One of my all-time favorite quotes from Shannon Hale is "I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles." Your novel in its first draft is not going to be as well written or have as tight a plot as something published or on TV. It's like looking at a bowl of flour, sugar, and eggs and saying your cake tastes like crap. There is more than enough time to get your work to the level you want it to be. Chances are, those pieces of art have gone through countless more drafts and revisions than where your work is at. Don't compare your mix of ingredients to a finished cake.

When you feel yourself stalling out and the "it'll never be good enough" thoughts start whispering to you, remind yourself that a work-in-progress can be edited as many times as needed to get it to a place where it will be good enough. Beta readers, critique groups, developmental, copy, and line editors are all people who will help you polish your wip into the best and most fabulous version of your story it could ever be. If you give up before these people can even help you, then Josh, the annoying little perfectionist gremlin in your head, will be right. An abandoned work will never be good enough. The only way to prove Josh wrong is to keep going!

#3 - You don't know where you're going. I know that not everyone uses or needs an outline, but at the very least you need to know how your story is going to end. You need to keep in mind how you want your characters to change so you can continue to make steady progress towards that goal. You don't need to have a super detailed plot outline unless you want to - more power to ya - but you do have to know where you're headed. Even if it's just a sentence or two scribbled on a sticky note you stuck to the wall next to your computer.

If you start writing without an ending in mind, chances are high that by the time you reach the middle, you're going to get stuck. You'll write yourself into a plot hole so deep you can't possibly dig yourself back out of it without burying yourself under a mountain of mess. Knowing where your characters need to end up by the time you write "the end" can help keep you from digging such deep and inescapable plot holes. It won't prevent any plot holes from forming though, that's impossible. Plot holes are bound to happen in the writing process and are completely natural and, I dare say, necessary. But these plot holes will be small, requiring minor tweaks and changes to the plot, characters, or worldbuilding. Substantial plot holes, however, just drag out your writing timeline and leave you feeling frustrated. Best to avoid them if you can.

But what should you do if you still end up with a big plot hole and you don't know how to get out of it? Some of the best writing advice I've ever received taught me that if you're struggling to get through a scene, chances are the problem is two or three scenes farther back. This is true of plot holes as well. While I don't advise editing your work as you go, especially during NaNo, if you've hit a wall and can't continue, it may be best to go back several scenes and think about how you could do things differently. Pick a point where a character must make a decision, and have them choose differently. Where will they go from there? How does this affect the rest of the story? But SAVE EVERYTHING THAT DIDN'T WORK! Don't just highlight and delete all those words from your manuscript (especially during nano when every word is as precious as the One Ring). Instead, bracket them or move them to a different file. You never know when pieces of scenes that didn't survive may come in handy later in the story. No words are ever truly a waste.

#4 - You're not starting each draft fresh. Editing is a difficult and time-consuming task. Many writers consider editing to be the hardest part of the writing process. You have to take your mix of proverbial ingredients and figure out how to fix the combination to get the cake you imagine in your mind. Many people write their first draft, read through it, and dive into the existing work to try to fix all the things wrong with it. They'll rewrite paragraphs or scenes, and tweak dialogue. And while this can save you time in the editing phase, it runs the risk of making your manuscript feel choppy and disjointed. This can lead to your draft being a bigger mess than when you started editing. And then where do you go from there? What can you possibly do to fix the mess you made when you were already trying to fix the mess? Now you're stuck because you don't know how to proceed.

Most people avoid doing anything that makes them tear their work apart. It is, after all, your precious baby that you've invested hours of blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point. But I'll share with you a little secret; sometimes tearing your work apart is exactly what it needs. And no, I don't mean literally print out your manuscript and rip the paper into itty-bitty pieces. (Unless you want to. Ripping things apart can be quite cathartic.) I mean, take your wip and break it into pieces: what is working or what you like, and what is not working or what you don't like. Then, take the pieces that aren't working, and ask yourself why. Why does this scene feel flat? Why do I not like this character? Finding the answers to these questions will help you write a better second draft.

Then take the pieces that survived the slaughter and the answers you found for the ones that didn't and START OVER. Re-write your manuscript from the very beginning. Don't look at your old draft, don't try to copy paragraphs word for word. Start fresh, but fit the existing pieces onto the new board, if you will. Then do this process over and over again, draft after draft, until you end up with a manuscript you think is strong enough to go to edit. To go back to the cake metaphor, if your cake came out of the oven flat or extra dark in places you might try to cover those mistakes with icing and decorations, but there's only so much covering you can do before it merely highlights your mistakes. Taking note of what went wrong in the steps leading up to taking the cake out of the oven and then starting over with a fresh cake can lead to the whole thing ending up far more neat and tidy than simply trying to fix the mistakes in the original.

I will admit that this method can take longer as you're starting over from the beginning again. But if the end result is much better, I think the extra time will ultimately be worth it in the end. After all, your readers will never know how many months or years the book took to write (unless it's a book in a continuing series, then they'll totally know) only whether it's well written or not. Plus, if you go the other route, and end up with an even bigger mess then you'll have to start over anyway, and you'll have spent time on steps you didn't need to make. Do yourself a favor and start each draft fresh. I promise it's worth the effort.

In conclusion, writer's block can be caused by several factors, including but not limited to burnout, perfectionism, unclear end goals, and not editing by starting a fresh draft. Every writer is different, with different methods and approaches that work best for them, and that means they will also face challenges unique to them as well. But if writer's block has been a barrier to finishing your book, I hope these four explanations can help you overcome it. Let me know down in the comments if there's a particular spice of writer's block you often suffer from that I should write about.

Good luck fellow writer,

-G.E. McKnight