A blank page is the enemy of every writer. I spend more time alone with the white of the google docs than I do editing any story I have written. Writers alone grasp this unique fear: the persistent notion that only flawless work suffices. Within the written journey, however, we come to a moment where we must simply continue.
Stagnation will haunt you more than failure, so continuation becomes the sole option. You can languish before the idea of potential, but no one ever succeeded with only an idea. When it comes to putting pen to page, you must regurgitate any word that comes to mind. A book is truly written during the editing stage. I have seen many dear and talented friends abandon projects that had me eager for their completion, only to be let down by a case of writer's block.
For four years, I attended a literary arts-focused high school program, and the instructors taught us one subject that sparks controversy during my book club discussions. Writer's block does not exist.
Much like all other matters in life, you must push through. A single decision pushes a dream toward reality, and no matter how hard it becomes, it is up to you to continue. It is up to you to sit within the discomfort of imperfection and familiarize yourself with the slow process of improvement and failure. When you face a crossroads, do you halt, or do you commit to a single path?
Writer's block does not exist. Only indecisiveness. You know not the destination of your characters or desires, but as you continue to forge on, you will see them take shape before your eyes. So many times I write, only to have the characters themselves reveal their personalities and decisions to me. There is a poet, Heidi Priebe, who says something I think applicable to the author;
“To love someone is to attend a thousand funerals of the person they once were.”
Does a writer not do the same?
You mourn the potential of your characters, and the versions of them between draft one and draft five. You mourn a story not in existence because we love them as though they are real and completed figures. When you feel stuck, keep writing, and let your characters expose themselves to you. When I continue to write after a period of boredom or disorganized focus, I will write only dialogue scenes. These help flesh out my characters' desires more, as though I am speaking to them. I learn what must be said and what cannot be said, and edit my pieces accordingly.
Perhaps you are more organized than I; perhaps you can plan in detail your chapters and still feel that burst of unproductivity- then your plot is not working. Try slight variations and write them separately, then compare how this may affect the overall plot line. The work is tedious; however, one slight adjustment demonstrates substantial potential.
In my Dear Sister story, I converted my characters from poor sisters sharing the burden of their dying mother, to noble ladies who were dear friends and shared the burden of expectations and confinements. This development took ten slow years to develop; at one point they were never to have met, and at another they were to hate each other. But none of these plots did their characters justice. And I had to spend much, much time testing out each possible plotline before settling on the one I thought best served their purpose and personality. But I pushed through. I wrote their story out hundreds of times in different shades of the same underlying message.
My point is that my stories only ever stopped when I stopped. I have come to know writer’s block is often less about inability and more about fear, indecision, or perfectionism. If you persevere, explore every avenue, or converse with your characters, you can craft a story that ignites a fierce passion.
