Okay. I'm not about to say that this is a cure-all for writer's block, but I have a theory that may help some of you fellow writers who suffer, stare at the keyboard, contemplate literary suicide and bang your heads on the desk.
One thousand words per day (or in my case, per night). Do the maths and you'll figure out how long it will take you to meet your word count goal.
Then, write.
When you start off, it can seem like a huge hurdle when you're struggling to find one quality sentence. One thousand words? Seriously?
My solution is to puke on to the screen. Yucky, I know - but it's really a truthful way of describing the process. Typing the most crappy, basic, telling-style prose, just to get the skeleton down. Then, slowly, the puke turns into something a little more appetising (which isn't hard!) and suddenly I find myself enjoying what I write, because at some point, by relaxing and accepting the crappy first draft, I've relaxed my brain and allowed creativity to flow.
A lot of the time, the 1000 words consists of dialogue and some action. Easy! The descriptive prose often comes around when I go over the first draft.
Sometimes, by the time I've done 1000 words, I'm ready to stop. At other times, I can go on and do another 500 or 1000. The point is, getting it down is important. You can work with a lump of clay, as unattractive as it may be in its original form, but you can't work with thin air.
And yes, when I miss a night, it nags at me until I make up for it. Sometimes, I'll write double the nightly word count to compensate, or the nagging goes on. Does the nagging ever end? I think this is our curse, as writers. But the creative process and final product are worth it.
What do you think, fellow writers?
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