A look at past Blood Red Pencil posts indicates procrastination is a challenge for many and often comes hand-in-hand with writer's block.      My Cure for Writer’s Block and Procrastination Pat Stoltey: "Last year I needed something more drastic. A new approach to motivating myself." Tuesday, June 12, 2018 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... [ Read more ]       How do I Procrastinate? Heidi Thomas:   Monday, March 7, 2011 How do I Procrastinate? I hereby dub ...

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 passag...

This is probably not the time to talk about this subject, especially while so many people are busy working on NaNoWriMo projects, but we have to face it: sometimes, the writing won’t come. There are some writing experts that will tell you to write through this moment to get back to the story. I’m not really a fan of that suggestion because it can lead to a lot of frustration and negative feelings when/if the story continues to stall. Writing is mental; it’s also physical, emotional, psychological, and for many people, spiritual. When problems arise in one or more of these cogs, writing can stall. Sure, you can push your way through and perhaps suffer agitation, frustration, and anxiety over the lack of writing. However, you can also tell yourself, IT’S OK, and work in other areas to keep your creative juices flowing and ready for when your story returns. So, what can you do when the story packs its bags and flees? Here are a few suggestions. Play with your characters ....

We are currently in the second week of NaNoWriMo , and in a few days, we will be moving through the halfway mark and into the third week. Surely, many of us started with a bang, fingers striking keys the second after midnight on November 1. We've been eager, working out strategies, waking up early to get the writing in, developing some scheme to make sure we get in our 1667+ words a day. This is about the time, however, where some of us that started strong begin to peter out. We begin to question our story, actually think about the writing instead of writing. We begin to wonder if our story is good. At this stage, this point where we're about to hit the peak of the writing mountain and need that push to the peak, we need to remember this: What opportunities? Well, surely not to ditch the writing altogether and call your NaNo 2012 experience a bust. Below, I present you with a few opportunities that can keep you writing . . . and ultimately winning NaNoWriMo. Jum...

My life has always been about the word busy . Being busy with so many things often keeps me away from writing creatively. In 2012, the word busy  has literally taken on a life of its own. Among other things, my Ph.D. work, my teaching load, and my editorial work keep me plenty busy. After struggling to write well academically, to teach students to write well, and to assist clients with their stories, I have had no get up and go to delve into my own creative spaces. In July, I tried to give myself time to think about my own stories and was failing miserably until the end of July when I learned of Esquire 's short short fiction contest . On a whim, I thought, Surely, I can put together 79 words that don't suck too badly, right? It took some time to write the piece, for as we all know, the shorter a piece, the more important each word becomes. In the writing of that first piece, a fire was lit inside me to write more. So, I did. [ my 79-worders ] Since July ...

You’re sitting at your computer, hands poised on the keyboard. You’ve planned your story, done your character sketches and outline, and know exactly what will happen and how it will end. But where does it start? You look at the row of question marks on the first line of your outline. You didn’t know where to begin when you created it, and you don’t know now. Or, for the fifth time, you’ve rewritten a tense scene that’s pivotal to the story, but it still lies flat on the page. All the elements are there, but it doesn’t sing. And it won’t hook a reader. Now what? The ability to write is a talent. The ability to write well is an acquired skill. How do you move from one to the other? Taking a writing class offers possibilities, particularly when it comes to grammar skills. The downside, however, might be a one-size-fits-all approach that can inhibit rather than foster creativity. A writing group offers a forum for brainstorming and inspiration. The critiquing process, if handled wi...

In Eric M. Eisenberg's "Building a Mystery: Toward a New Theory of Communication and Identity," one of the things Eisenberg discusses is the therapeutic approaches to rewriting personal narratives. He makes a comparison between being a protagonist and being a storyteller and how each role can either constrict a person's identity and his or her view of the world or help expand one's identity and view. Being the protagonist, for example, is safe--we know that story, we know the character, and even if we feel trapped by the role, the safety of it, the comfortability of it keeps us trapped within that identity. It can also keep us from seeing beyond the role to the world and other people that surround us. On the other hand, the storyteller, as Eisenberg asserts, "always keeps one metatruth in mind: I am not the story" (547). Not "being the story," the storyteller easily moves from story to story. The storyteller stays in a story long "enough...

Whether you’re writing your first book or your tenth, whether you’re writing memoir or fiction or non-fiction, you will occasionally encounter roadblocks (which sometimes look a lot like brick walls). You might have trouble getting your character from one place to another, or from one year to another – a troublesome transition. Your character could be stuck in a situation with no practical and believable way to escape. Perhaps you discover a fatal flaw in your timeline, destroying the logical progression of events across six chapters. The end result? You’re stuck and you can’t find a way out. Before you delete big sections of prose or feed the whole manuscript to your shredder, one tortured, tear-soaked page at a time, try a brainstorming session with a couple of writer friends or members of your critique group. Even a session with non-writers who read a lot can be helpful. Invite the idea team to sit around your kitchen table, share tea and cookies, and focus on your writing...

If you lose your momentum on a book project, is it possible to get it back? Most times, I would say yes. Let’s say you’re writing along and things are going great. Then you hit a block. You don’t know where to go from there. You’re stuck. Here are some ideas. Run through the plot so far. If you’ve been keeping a Book Bible, refer to that. What has been the sequence? As you do that, envision the characters. (Get up and walk around, if that helps.) Now envision what your character would do next. Or perhaps envision what would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to your character at this point. Then either sit down and write it or make notes on the different scenarios you come up with. Or if this kind of walking, talking and visualizing is not your thing, then get out paper or sit at your computer and type ideas. Doesn’t matter how wild or crazy, you’re not judging them at this time. Right now, you just type ideas as they come into your head. You can go back and filter them la...