The Truth About Writer’s Block

It happens to every writer at some point or another. After I had worked through a complete rough draft of my first novel, writer’s block was the last thing on my mind. But as I started thinking about and working on my second novel, that’s when it hit: a blank page staring back at me. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t even think of where to begin, and it scared me to consider traveling down the dark paths of a serial killer’s mind again. Writer’s block was very real for me just a few short months ago. And sometimes it felt like a literal block wedged between myself and any form of narrative I had once naturally penned. It was very scary, and very eye-opening.

I recently traveled to Germany with my husband, Peter, which gave me the time away from writing that I needed. Before I went to Germany, I was so scattered. We enjoy socializing with friends and business associates and doing volunteer work, but I really have to write to be happy and focused. After I got back from Germany, I had to isolate myself and tell myself that I would put everything on hold in my life and just focus on the book. And as a result my writing is much better, I feel much freer, and I am not turning in halfhearted pieces to my editor. I’m handing in pages that are deserving of her edits.

I’ve learned that the best way for me to overcome writer’s block is to read material that’s close to mine in the same genre so I get the tone and style in my mind and to immerse myself in the research. I’m going to New Orleans soon for a week with my good friend Kelly to dig into the scenes for Thicker Than Blood. I’ll be interviewing lots of Kelly’s friends and some of my family’s friends who have been there a long time and know the city. I’m looking forward to feeling the inspiration again.

People might not want to hear it, but I literally just pray and then I write. I find that the more passion I put into it, the better my writing becomes. And when I rush myself—as I was doing to get this next book done by October—I don’t enjoy the process. It becomes more about getting it done.

Another battle I fight is the desire to give up. I’ve sent my editor pages before that I knew weren’t very good, and she rewrote them, but it just wasn’t my voice. It was her voice. I love this woman—she’s such a character and she’s really good at what she does—but I had to tell her not to write for me. When I wrote Under a Cloud of Rain, I drafted the whole book, and then I sent it to her. For Thicker Than Blood we began with a step-by-step methodology, so I was sending her scenes as I wrote them, but it wasn’t working for me, so I told her to let me write the book first, and then we could edit. There was a piece of me that wanted someone else to fool with those scenes because I didn’t want to have to go that deep back into the mind of the serial killer. But now that I’ve started focusing solely on my writing, and digging into the scenes, I feel very good about the next few months of writing, and I’ll have plenty to show her for my first round of edits!