Mechelle asked Shannon Messenger:

I've suffered from really bad cases of writer's block before and I was wondering if you had a technique that would help with getting rid of writer's block? Also, thank you for such amazing books and I look forward to others.

Shannon Messenger Hm, this is hard because my usual answer is that "writer's block is a myth" but I don't want to make light of what you've been through. The reason I say that is because I feel like writer's block gets built into a much bigger thing than it is. Rarely is it that someone literally has NO IDEAS AT ALL. Usually they're just "stuck"--either a story isn't cooperating and they can't figure out why, or they can't decide which project they want to work on, or they're psyching themselves out, thinking that what they're writing isn't any good. And putting the label "Writer's block" on that makes it feel so HUGE. When it's really not a big deal. Usually what's happening is you're either trying to force an idea to be something its not (maybe it wasn't meant to be a whole book, or maybe some element of the story isn't what you think it is, or maybe the plot wants to go a different way than how you expected) or because you wrote yourself into a corner and need to go back and change something. And for me, the answer is always to step back and look at the project objectively, and ask myself "what if" a bunch. "What if I changed THIS or THIS or THIS?" Or "what if I let THIS happen?" Usually a few hours of brainstorming that way and I find the solution to get unstuck. Or, sometimes you also have to realize that maybe an idea wasn't as awesome as you thought and you should set it aside and work on something else. It doesn't mean you're blocked. You're just going through the natural creative process.

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