Ask An Author: What gets you out of writer's block?

Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions. Patricia C. Wrede, our third counselor, is the much-loved author of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and has just published a book for aspiring authors called Wrede on Writing:

What gets you out of a writer’s block? — Anonymous

It depends on what sort of writer’s block you mean. There is real writer’s block, which I define as the actual inability to write so much as a grocery list or email; in my experience, this is usually tied to some non-writing thing like depression, and probably requires therapy. Then there’s what most people mean by “writer’s block,” which is “I am not making progress on my novel.”

This kind of writer’s block happens for one of several reasons:

I just don’t feel like writing today.
I don’t know what happens next.
I know what happens, but it’s something I don’t want to write.
I didn’t think things through, and am either just about to do something hideously wrong or have just done something hideously wrong, and my backbrain refuses to go on until I fix it.

In the case of 1 and 3, what I do is write anyway. It is no fun, but there is no job anywhere that is 100% fun, 24/7.

In the case of 2 and 4, saying “just write” will not work, because something is off; what is required is thinking. If I don’t know what happens next, it’s a matter of thinking about all the various things that could happen next until I get to one I like. This is not casual thinking; it is hard work thinking.

In the case of 4, I won’t be able to progress until I figure out what the problem is and fix it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, for me, the problem is that I made somebody act out of character in order to keep the plot moving; the fix is to have them act in character and then either figure out a way to make my original plot happen anyway, or else figure out where the new action will take the story (which usually involves making up a new plot from there on.)

Next week’s final Camp Counselor will be Michael David Lukas, author of historical novel  The Oracle of Stamboul .

Ask him your questions here!