When words won't come: advice for the stuck writer

by Teri Terry

The Cry of the Stuck Author: I'm all impatient now because I started off so well! I want to have the whole plot worked out in a day! Damn it, this story telling malarkey is difficult...

Isn't it just.

I get asked all the time: what do you do when you hit the wall: the dreaded writer's block? There seems to be

Could this help?

an assumption behind the question that because I'm published now I've got it all figured out.

If only! Could there be one sweet, secret answer?

I'm not sure I believe in writer's block in the way this term is often used - I see it more as writer's procrastination. Or fear: of not finding the 'right' way. Of not being good enough.

Or this?

But staring at a page and not knowing what happens next, or, more usual in my case, knowing where I want to end up, but not being sure how to get there - that happens, all the time. 



This came up recently with a group of writing friends:

Caroline Green: What do you guys do (the ones who plan in advance) when you have a great idea and are all fired up and a synopsis is pouring out...and then you hit a brick wall and can't see around it at all? Write a chapter and see where it goes? Draw some sort of exciting graphic thingie? Cry?

I was fascinated at some of the answers. Some are things I've learned to do, some are new to me but I'm very definitely going to try them! 

So here they are:

1. Incubation: patience, grasshopper...

The pie of destiny may be just around the corner...

Hilary Freeman: Leave it a while. It'll come to you.






R.M. Ivory: Sleep/dream on it, like Hilary says it will come to you but sometimes you need some time and space away from it. In the meantime you could write a chapter or a scene from it and see what happens.


Maybe wisdom is hiding in a few of these?







Ruth Warburton: It depends on the brick wall. If it's something that happens further down the line in the plot, quite often I start writing and let my subconscious sort it out while I write - and often the key is in something to do with their characters which only becomes apparent while I write. Usually by the time I get to the wall it's solved. If it's something more fundamental about the shape of the book or something closer then I agree, it's a sign that it needs to grow a bit more in its egg before it hatches. Pop it back for some more incubation time.






Bryony Pearce: I give it time. My brain always works it out in the end. Did for me today in fact - had been stuck for weeks.


2. Slip into neutral: do something else,leaving your brain time and space to muddle things through





Teri Terry: write a blog. Have a very, very long shower.
 Make cookies. Or polish your ducks. 

Definite problem solvers, these ones

Addy Farmer: I go for a walk. It works pretty much every time. Everything unsticks or unknots and I find good ideas flow free. I always take a notebook with me, ready!

Candy Gourlay: When I'm stuck, I read until I'm back in the mood to write. The rule is that the book must be in the same mood, genre, general world, emotional place, as the scene I'm trying to write.

3. Make things up as you go along





Michelle Harrison: Blag it. I hit a wall with the synopsis of the book I'm writing now. I hate giving away everything anyway, even though you're *supposed* to, so I write it in a way that I call the extended blurb which doesn't give all the answers.


Dive in...!





Eve Harvey: I get my favourite pen out and an A4 notebook and just write any ideas I can think of, no matter how shite. I scribble and doodle all over page after page and eventually I write the solution. My pen and imagination seem to work well together.


4. Attack the problem: be analytical





Cath Murphy: I'm very analytical so I ask myself a lot of questions about what exactly the problem is and try to find an answer that way. Or sometimes I write backwards from the end (if I know what the end is). Or sometimes I give up and open a bottle of red wine.

A woman after my own heart





Emma Haughton: Like Cath I use questions. I use a fresh Word document and ask myself questions around the problem and write down all the possible solutions. Sometimes I use mindmaps too, to brainstorm all the possibilities. The answer always seems to emerge.


Sally Nicholls: Look at the things you've already given your characters - hobbies, relations, friends, skills, places. Often one of those turns out to be the solution.
You could even see it as a challenge - my main character needs to find her mum, and she's only got a love of art, a grumpy granny, an obsession with Facebook, two brothers, a cat, a D in maths, a holiday in France last year and a dream to be a ballerina to help her. Set it out like that and you discover she only really needs Granny and Facebook.


And me?
I was really fascinated by all of this, as I'd hit a wall recently in my shiny new thing, too. I knew the shape of the story, but there was an event that was crucial, with a specific result, and I couldn't work out how the event took place. The original way I'd envisioned was flawed and I needed a new way. And I tried writing down all the possibilities; I tried making it up as I went along. Nothing was working.

The wall of fear

One thing I've learned about myself more and more? Incubation really is key. No matter how much a deadline is looming, there's no point in barrelling ahead if the story hasn't cooked enough in my imagination.

In this instance I woke up from a sound sleep at 2 a.m., and the answer was just there, in my mind. How that I happens sometimes, I don't know! Both incubation, and letting my mind think/dream about it while I'm doing other things, seemed to play a role in this instance. In this case - and this happens to me a LOT - the problem was this: I was focusing on something specific (how to write a scene) when the problem was more general (there was an aspect of the story that needed to tie in, and I hadn't realized it yet).

The gingerbread of hope

I just thanked the muse for the gift, and got up in the middle of the night to write it down.

Overall?
The trick for me is working out when I'm stuck because I need to stop and think, and when I'm just being lazy. Sometimes just writing and going for it and seeing what happens can work. And I love tackling the how-to-get-from-a-to-b problem by scribbling all the possibilities I can think of with pen and paper: it is surprising how often this makes the answer blindingly obvious. I haven't attacked the problem in an analytical way so much, and I'm intrigued to try that.

But most of all - I'm just surprised nobody mentioned cake.

Ten Top Tips to Finding an Agent - Benjamin Scott's Guest Blog

by Addy Farmer

Benjamin is the Writing for Young Adults online course tutor for Oxford University Continuing Education Department. He teaches creative writing to a range of groups, schools and organisations. As well as pursuing his own writing, he is lead author on the Star Fighters series written under Max Chase for Working Partners. He runs his own private critique and editing service and is honoured to be one of the four editors for this year’s Undiscovered Voices. Website and Twitter: www.benjaminscott.net and @Benjamin_Scott

Having just signed with my agent, Gillie Russell at Aitken Alexander, I’m delighted to share with you 10 tips to help you with your agent search. I can’t promise to make it faster, but there are several things you can do to make it easier to find that agent willing to champion you and your work. My own achievement on taking my writing journey that bit further is still sinking in, but it’s a delight to know that I’m now sharing the next stage with my agent.

1). Join SCBWI. As a former ARA, I bet you think I might be biased, but the truth is I wouldn't have come this far without the support of some great friends, making some brilliant contacts and having access to amazing advice which being a SCBWI member brings.

2). Get involved. It’s not just a matter of joining and hoping good things will come to you. I say this as someone who lives over two hours from London and gets back after midnight from any evening event in the capital. Grab as many chances as you can to meet people and participate as much as possible.

It’s true, the more you put in, the more you get out.

3). Welcome friends who will encourage you to push your work further. I’ve been blessed to find some great critique partners. If you’re really lucky, they’ll hold off telling you to send it out until they genuinely believe your work is ready and then give you a massive shove to send it out. I’m a huge rewriter and it helped to have someone say it’s time I sent it out and stopped avoiding the submissions process.

4). Live in the moment. Celebrate all concrete achievements. Don’t worry about things you have yet to achieve or problems that don’t exist. Creative people can be easily distracted by the shiny baubles of the future, but grasp onto the future too tightly and those glass baubles can break and hurt. A question I try to live by is “What if this is it?” What if today, this hour, this minute is it? Am I going to appreciate and love this moment? Am I going to be grateful for my achievements however modest or am I going to feel bad because I haven’t won a Carnegie yet? What a thrill to have at least tried and got this far. I have no guarantee that I’ll get any further in publishing than this (although I plan and hope to do more - much more) but if this is it for me then I want to go to sleep with a smile on my face and have sweet dreams. I want to write without worrying about the future.

More friends on a journey

5). Remember, it’s a numbers game. In a book on job hunting I co-wrote years ago, we made the point that applying for jobs is a numbers game. The fewer jobs you apply for, the lower your relative chances of being hired. The more companies that know you’re looking for work the higher the chance one of them will take you on. Publishing is a numbers game too. It comes down to luck and subjective evaluation.

Even if your book is a perfect bestseller-in-the-making just as it is, the more people you offer it to, the higher the chances someone will say yes.

6). Write more than one book (but not in the same series). I’ve stolen this advice from Sara O’Connor who told a SCBWI Masterclass that the only way to double your chances of selling work to an agent or editor is to write another book – on a different topic. I was pitching a 7+ series called Eureka Evans: A Disaster Waiting to Be Discovered, but I had a YA fantasy up my sleeve called The Summoning of Freiya Rolandson. My query letter only mentioned Freiya in passing, but my agent was keen to look at both projects. Two different books make two different opportunities – you double your chances.

7). Delete the R-Word from your vocabulary. I’m serious. Promise never to use the word Rejection again. You’d think as people who take care with words we’d find a better way to describe the phenomenon of an agent/editor deciding not to devote their time, energy and emotions/money to the book we sent them. The R-Word comes with too many connotations. As much as I can see the analogy between publishing and dating, rejection is not an easy word to feel neutral about, let alone positive. It’s also too personal. A pass from a gatekeeper is about the text and them, not about us as writers/people and them. Instead, I offer you the more neutral suggestion of a project simply being ‘passed on’ – that’s all it is. It simply wasn’t a fit this time around.

sometimes the fault lies with the stars

8). What was that about feeling positive about being passed on? Impossible, right? Like duelling scars in Bismark’s Prussia, I regard each pass is a BADGE OF HONOUR. It’s a rite of passage. Let’s face it, few, if any, writers get away without a single agent or editor passing on one of their books at some point. If it was all right for J.K. Rowling or William Golding to have had work turned down then I see it as a personal Badges of Honour to have at least had the courage to send my best work out and see how it fared. Somewhere inscribed on these imaginary badges are the words Perseverance vincit (Perseverance conquers). Each Badge of Honour is a personal invite to try again as Samuel Beckett wrote: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

J.K. never gave up on Harry

9). Stagger your submissions and plan for the long haul. This is just practical planning really. Draw up a list of all the agents who represent the work you’re sending out and draw up a list of potential editors too. As an agent advised at a SCBWI Agent’s Party a while back, if you apply to editors and they all pass on your project then there’s nothing an agent can do for you – the well of opportunity is dry. However, if all the agents pass on your book then there’s a whole load of editors to approach.

I found the way that worked best for me was to send out one query a week (and therefore hopefully one submission a week) to ensure no matter whom passed on my work I knew what to do next: just follow the plan.

10). Send a query first and start a dialogue before you send a submission. I like to know that I’ve got the right email address and that the agent has some sense of me and my project before they receive a manuscript or sample. Time is hugely precious and an informative and to the point query often gets a quick response that a submission. It goes without saying always be polite and always be patient.

Thanks so much, Benjamin! This is such good advice from someone who knows. 

Just Because Social Media is a Tool Doesn't Mean You've Got to Be A Tool Too.

By Candy Gourlay

Social Media is not the way, the truth and the light. It is a tool. Just a tool.

Just because it's a tool doesn't mean you've got to be a tool too.

I added someone I didn't know on Facebook the other day. He was already friends with several of my writing contacts. He declared himself an author so, fair enough, I thought.

Immediately I got a message - not a private message, but a message on my wall. 'My new book Title of Book, is now on Amazon ... it's about ... etc etc'

By posting on my wall, he was promoting his book to all my contacts. I deleted him immediately.

And then I felt guilty.