Help! I’m stuck
Right at the beginning of this blog journey, in ‘Writing: Day One’ I suggested just writing loads and loads every day. That’s fine, if there’s loads and loads to write – even, as I said back then, if it might feel like complete rubbish. But what if you’re finding it tricky? What if you’re stuck and nothing is finding its way from your brain to your fingers? Even complete rubbish.
Let’s go back to basics and look at what might help the process. Once again, please forgive me if all this seems entirely obvious.
First up, try to have one dedicated space in which to work. The biggest advantage is that you don’t have to keep getting out all the stuff you need at the start of a writing session – and it enables you to be more spontaneous and to write instantly when inspiration strikes. When I took up the guitar again, after many years, one tip that really made sense to me was not keeping your guitar in its case under the bed. If it becomes a faff every time you want to play, you’ll quickly stop doing it. The same applies to writing. Make it as easy and as natural as possible. Do you have to get your kettle out of a cupboard every time you want to make a cup of tea? Exactly.
We don’t all have the luxury of a whole room – or even better, a wholly separate space, like Roald Dahl’s wonderful shed – but having an area, the equivalent of the small writing desk that you’d find in a Victorian house, is really useful.
When you need a change, take up residence in a café for an hour or two or even a library, depending on whether you like a bit of background noise or not.
Talking of which, some people don’t realise that silence really doesn’t help until they find themselves somewhere like a café and suddenly the ideas start flowing. Sometimes I’ll say “Alexa, play Ambient Coffee Shop for one hour” and magically (well, it always seems magic to me!) she produces a loop of exactly that – for one hour. I know it’s a loop because of one woman’s very distinctive laugh. But her cackle only appears around every three or four minutes. I could time it, if I was feeling extra nerdy.
Music is an obvious background too but because I love music so much, I actually find it distracting. I find myself tuning-in to it rather than tuning-in to what I’m supposed to be writing. But your experience may be completely different. A lot of teenagers these days (that makes me sound even older than I am) seem to like at least three audible and visual distractions in order to get any work done at all. I don’t know how they do it!
Try escaping the tyranny of the blank screen. Go analogue and start scrawling on an A4 pad of paper. Something else that’s worked for me is buying a roll of white paper and spreading a big sheet of it on the floor, before doing a kind of ‘spidergram’ (or whatever they’re called), visually linking apparently random ideas to see if there are connected themes, characters and events. Then there’s always the pack of 6x4 cards. Screenwriters use these a lot when mapping-out scenes, sequences and act structures. There are software versions of the cards but to me that kind of defeats the point of the physical process and the joy of getting away from the screen and keyboard.
If you’re not sure where your story’s going next, the most obvious thing is to do some research. Real-life scenarios can be very inspiring. What really happens can also reduce the possibilities – because sometimes we have too many choices for what might happen and that can be debilitating, as in not knowing which route to take.
Still stuck? There’s always that most basic of emergency assistance – phone a friend. It doesn’t matter who it is: everyone who can read knows what a good story is. Sometimes just by having to talk it all through, you’ll even reach the solution yourself without your friend having to do anything apart from listen.
Other things that may help? Try going for a brisk walk – but take a notebook with you or have the audio recording app handy on your phone, if inspiration strikes. Ideas are like magma – they can be bubbling around deep down for ages. Just be ready when the eruption hits!
So there we are. Like I said, it’s all very obvious stuff – and there will be days when NONE of this works. But that’s okay. Despite my advice to write every day, that’s the ideal rather than the norm. It’s fine to take a day off, a week, even a month or two – as long as you eventually go back and finish the darned thing!
As always, happy writing!