Goodreads asked Mark Nelson:

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Mark Nelson Activity helps. If the words don't come, I'll take a walk, read a book, let life sweep me along for awhile. Discipline helps keep the word flow going for me. If I set myself down at the keyboard, relax, let the questions percolating in my hind brain come forward, let the characters who have to deal with those questions start talking to me, then words come. Sometimes they take me in unexpected directions, and THAT is when things get interesting. I recall pausing for a whole year after finishing an early draft of Poets. I knew book two would have to be bigger and more complex, and I wasn't sure I could pull it off. I had a handful of characters rattling their chains in my sleep. One day in the middle of a rain interrupted vacation in Idaho, I borrowed my daughter's laptop and wrote 3000 words and was off and running. Great fun.

flag