Blockbuster Ten

Ten Things You Can Do to Bust Writer's Block

Break It Promise: Make this deal with yourself: if you write for the next thirty minutes, you can take thirty minutes off to do something fun. If thirty minutes seems too long, try fifteen or ten.

Celebrate: Throw yourself a Writer's Block party with your real-life people. Order in Chinese or Pizza. Ask everyone for suggestions on how to beat your block. Offer silly prizes for the best suggestions.

Change POV: Switch the POV to another character. Try telling your story from the point of view of other-than-protagonist characters, too, like a secondary, a hidden character, or the antagonist.

Clean: This is my favorite method for getting back on track with writing -- I tidy a room, vacuum the carpet, dust, or do some other housework for an hour. Cleaning always works out my frustrations and makes me feel better. By the time I'm finished I always feel like I've gotten rid of the internal cobwebs and dust bunnies, too.

End it: Stop writing whatever you're working on and write the very last chapter of that story.

Move On: Often a block is caused by a difficult-to-write scene. If that's the case, tag the place for the scene with a short reminder (i.e. [write fight scene between A and B]) and move on to the next.

Musical: Stop writing and listen to some inspiring music for fifteen minutes. Or take a break and put together a playlist for your story, and then listen to the piece you choose for the place where you stopped in the story and use the music to help you better visualize your scene.

Relocate: Take your writing and go somewhere else to write. Try different and new locations like a park, a library, or a cafe you've never visited. See where you're most productive and write there for a week.

Shutdown: If you can't write because your story seems trite, you've lost interest in it, you can't figure a way out of a plot problem, your characters have turned into wallpaper or any of a thousand other causes for your writer's block, why bother? Shelve the story and start a new one. You can always go back to the story you shelve if you want to have another go at it.

Timely: This is a way to start short and build on what you can do. Begin by writing five words. Take a short break. When you come back, write ten more words. Take a short break. When you come back, write twenty more words. Take a short break. Continue on by doubling your wordcount every time you come back from a break until you're back writing at your optimum rate.