My Cure for Writer’s Block and Procrastination

Everybody has a cure, right? A way to pull yourself out of the doldrums and get back to being a writer who writes. We try them all from setting timers and typing gibberish to practicing with writing prompts until an idea kicks in. Maybe we try three morning pages every day, pretending we’re journaling when we’re really writing a story.

Or maybe we just set aside an hour a day to sit down at the computer, place our fingers on the keyboard, and then stare at the monitor.

Last year I needed something more drastic. A new approach to motivating myself. I pondered. I thought. And then I made a decision. I warned my critique group that I would be submitting work that would not follow any rules of writing. All they needed to look at was transitions from one scene to another or from one character to another.

They were instructed not to pick on things like head hopping or point of view changes midstream unless they got lost and didn’t know which character I was talking about. Long passages of narrative and backstory were okay. Author intrusion was perfectly acceptable.

I expected the group to get frustrated and invite me to kill that project and get serious. Instead, they went along with my crazy idea and offered great suggestions along the way. I guess sometimes it pays to throw caution to the winds (I have cliché’s in my piece as well) and just write without all that fretting about rules.

At the beginning I called my “seat of the pants” project Bobby Stryger Will Die Today, but later changed it to One Day at the Cat’s Claw Pub. In the rule-free exercise, I have about 13,000 words and a new idea for making it into a real novel.

I stopped working on it when I got an idea for a second Sangamon Village novel and used NaNoWriMo to get that real manuscript going. I’m  writing again, following the important rules, and am doing fine.

So if you’re stuck in the middle of your work in process, can’t decide what you want to write next, or are merely sidetracked by so much busyness that you can only spare fifteen minutes a day to write, try this.

Make up a crazy title.

Start typing about a random character and what happens next and who else is there and DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE RULES.

I wrote stuff like this:

Author intrusion and foreshadowing

You’d think a man would be happy getting out after ten years, wouldn’t you? Especially when he was sentenced to three forty-year terms to be served consecutively. That’s because you don’t know the rest of the story, at least not yet.

He is using a fork for this task and has not yet noticed the big butcher knife he’d used to cut up the raw chicken earlier in the day is missing.

Head hopping from one character’s point of view to another

Curtis makes eye contact with the bartender, checks her out from head to toe--her red hair and big green eyes—then shakes his head at the mental comparison to his wife’s less spectacular looks. He pauses for just a second to watch his wife march away, then slides off the stool to follow.

Still grinning, Bonnie turns her back on the couple and rearranges a couple of the beer bottles on the back wall. She watches in the mirror though, waiting to see if Curtis looks back at her. He does not.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. It’s not wasted time if you weren’t writing anyway. For me, it pulled me back into the writing habit and triggered new ideas. So if you’re stuck, what have you got to lose? Break rules, have fun, and write.

For more reading about writer's block and procrastination, try these Blood-Red Pencil posts:
No One Loves Writer's Block
How Do I Procrastinate?

Pat (Patricia) Stoltey is the author of four novels published by Five Star/Cengage: two amateur sleuth, one thriller that was a finalist for a Colorado Book Award in 2015, and the historical mystery Wishing Caswell Dead (December 20, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Colorado Book Awards.

Pat lives in Northern Colorado with her husband Bill, Scottish Terrier Sassy (aka Doggity), and brown tabby Katie (aka Kitty Cat).

You can learn more about Pat at her website/blog, on Facebook, and Twitter. She was recently interviewed for a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers podcast that you can find at the RMFW website.