Writer's Block

[waitinginvain?]

Hi Everyone! I am in an MFA program for dramatic writing. Ironically, I have a difficult time writing! I either procrastinate or write very slowly.  One of my professors is expecting me to add 50 pages to my latest  play over the summer. It seems impossible! I know, I know, why am I in the program in the first place? I guess it's because when I do finally finish something, it's pretty good. I've had productions around the country and have had plays published. But if I can't compete with my prolific, fast-writing cohorts , I'll fail. Any helpful tips are appreciated--especially if they are not, "Shut off your internal editor as you write." That just doesn't work for me. Thank you all!

[fuzzylogician]

I am a fast writer ("disgustingly fast," as my friends put it) but I can only write *after* I've worked through what it is I want to say. I can't just start writing and bullshit or write something vague that will be revised later. I need to have a clear vision of the entire paper before I can start the writing portion. Once I'm there, I build a skeleton of the paper. I start with the section headings. Then I write some abstract and introduction, even though I know full well that I'll need to revise them, because it helps me to lay out the plan. Then I go and write some key points underneath each of my sections, and create subsections. For each new (sub)section I try and put down the key ideas I would like to have there. I point out where figures and graphs should go. I also keep in parallel to the paper a list (I like workflowy for this and all my other list-needs) with the same level of detail - each section, subsection and things that need to be created and go there (graphs, figures, statistical models, things I need to find out, outstanding reading). The goal of all these steps is to break down the work to manageable steps.

 

Once this is done, I can start filling in the blanks, and I try to have each step correspond to something that I can cross off a list, because that makes me feel like I've accomplished something tangible. It even helps me to create an item on my list and immediately cross it off if I've done X amount of work for the day and it doesn't correspond to any entire bullet point. It just helps me feel like I'm continuously making progress and it also helps me keep a record of the size of my steps and when they happened. I start with the easy parts - figures, graphs and descriptions thereof, as well as technical writing, because there is not much thinking to do there. At that point there should be at least a good 5-6 pages of the paper (some in bullet-point form, but never mind) and that's encouraging. After that I just plug away and work through sections, as much as possible in order so I don't end up repeating things in later sections that would have had to appear early. I have a policy of not looking back - what's written is written, it's an accomplished section and I move on. Later I go back and re-read. It's easier to edit once the whole thing is on paper and I think it saves time too.

 

I imagine that creative writing is not exactly the same, but that's the process that works for me.

[juilletmercredi]

Break it down.  Think about it this way:

 

If summer includes June, July, and August, there are 30 + 31 + 31 = 92 days in those months.

 

Writing 50 pages equals less than 1 page per day.  If you only wrote 5 days a week, and wrote 2 pages a day, you could write 50 pages in 5 weeks.  I know in creative writing, a lot of your writing doesn't end up in the final product. But even if you wrote five days per week, and wrote 2 pages per day for 10 weeks (so the middle of August, assuming you started in earnest in 2 weeks) you would have twice as many pages as you need.

 

I am one of those people who simply cannot shut off my internal editor.  I have managed to slow her down a bit.  I put a mantra on the wall behind my computer - "Just write."  Whenever I get blocked for a moment or start editing, I always end up looking up or around.  I see the mantra and it makes me get back to just spilling whatever on the page.  I also have set myself realistic page goals.  My per-day page goals don't exceed 3 pages per day.  That's because I'm the kind of person who HAS to find the right citation right then, the right word at that moment, the correct sentence structure.  I've gotten a whole lot better at letting my inner editor go in the last 5 years, but I still can't write mess and organize it later.  There's no such thing as a zero draft for me; I have first drafts only.

 

So set yourself lower daily page goals than your peers, and write more often.  You have to break it down into small tasks.  It's far easier to think "I have to write 2 pages today" than it is to say "I have to write 50 pages by the end of the summer."

 

I also build time into my writing schedule to procrastinate.  I know that I procrastinate and for me, it's been far more difficult to try to make myself NOT a procrastinator than to just allow for that time.  So I get up earlier.  I write best in the late morning and early afternoon, and in the late evening.  So I sit down at my computer at 8 or 9 am.  I procrastinate for 2 hours - check email, write on here, whatever.  Then when I have had my fill, I begin writing for another 2 hours.  I eat lunch later, take a break for 1 hour, then go back to writing - or I don't.  Sometimes I finish my writing for the day after dinner.  Some days I don't even start until after dinner.  I kind of have allowed myself to go with the flow a little bit more rather than trying to force myself to write at a specific time.  But I do force myself to meet my daily page goals.

 

It's gotten to the point where writing is its own reward - I feel good about meeting my page goal for the day, and that motivates me to write.  (And obviously if you work, you'll have to organize your days a little bit better.  But honestly, working helped drive me to write.  I was so happy to come home, park myself in my little corner and write for a few hours.)  Some people don't like daily page goals, and they prefer to set a certain number of hours instead.  I don't like that, because of my procrastinating nature as well as my inner editor.  Some days I can meet 3 pages in 2 hours and other days it takes me 5 hours (because my mind has wandered or I stopped to clean my bathroom or something).

 

I got some advice from a dissertation writing book - "Always park on the downhill slope."  That means that you need to do things to make it easier for you to start up the next time, especially if you are giving yourself small daily page goals.  If you only write 2 pages a day, you may not finish a section or scene in one day or even one week, so you need to write yourself notes to remind yourself what you were thinking and where you were going.  I put them in italics in line with the rest of my text.  I also allow my mind to wander during the writing process, but I put these ideas in other places.  see next paragraph.

 

Another thing that has really helped me is Scrivener.  Like you and fuzzy, I'm a planner.  I need to know what I am going to say before I say it; that's the only way I can sit down and write it.  I can't just go, even when I'm writing creative pieces.  So I create an outline.  A detailed one - my dissertation proposal outline had approximate page lengths of each section.  I refer back to this outline when I get lost and it helps me find my way again.  Scrivener allows me to store all of that stuff - snippets from prior drafts, my outline, an annotated bibliography - into one project.  It also helps me write less linearly, since I rarely write in a "straight line" but write different parts at different times and eventually stitch it together.  Scrivener also helps me when my mind is wandering; if I think of something brilliant for a future section/scene/chapter, I can put it in my "random ideas" file within the project for future reference, then continue writing.

[waitinginvain?]

Thank you!  This is so valuable to me.

 

Juillet, I especially like the idea of  planning time to procrastinate. I never would have thought to do that! Setting smaller goals than my peers is also a good tactic. They are all more prolific than I am, but not necessarily any more talented.

 

I'm going to check out Scrivener, too. .

 

Fuzzy, I'm going to use your guidelines the next time I have to write a paper. By the way, I could see how writing subsections could work with playwriting, too; they could serve as scenes!

 

I'm grateful to you both for your detailed suggestions. 
 

[Nerd_For_Life]

As a current procrastinator, I am also grateful

[wildviolet]

Wine... beer... whatever floats your boat. I have serious anxiety when I'm staring at a blank screen. I edit as I write, so I often cannot continue writing until I get that first sentence or paragraph perfect. So, alcohol to the rescue! Seriously, drunk writing is safe. It allows me to keep writing without any inhibitions... and, then I'll come back later to edit and will usually get rid of that entire first section. Sigh. I just can't stick to mini deadlines and breaking the writing process down into smaller chunks. Writing just doesn't work that way for me.

 

If you want a good read about how hard writing is, check this out:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5997/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-3-john-mcphee

[mandarin.orange]

Unblocking the writer is pretty easy; all you need to do is follow this advice: