How do I get over writer’s block?

Jeffrey's answer

I’ve never had writer’s block.

What I have had — many times, every novel — is the question: how do I solve this problem? You think of an idea. Then you sit there wondering how to get yourself out of it without the reader being bored, or working it out before you have. That is not writer’s block. That is the work.

The hourglass is on my desk for a reason. I sit down at six in the morning, I turn the sand, and I write. Whether I feel inspired is irrelevant. Whether the words are good is irrelevant for that first draft. The job is to write until the sand has run out. Some days are golden. Some days are wretched. Most days are simply work — and at the end of work I have pages, and pages are what novels are made of.

If you do find yourself stuck at the desk, my advice is the opposite of what most writers do. Keep writing. Often, when you go on writing through it, the writing leads you somewhere else entirely — off the page, in a strange direction. Then you have to go back and rewrite. I have no problem with that. And then, having rewritten, you go to bed and get an even better idea in the small hours. The point is to go on working. Not to feel sorry for yourself – and never begin – or to pause and stop half way through.

Walking helps me. I walk between writing sessions. The problem you cannot solve at the desk often solves itself by the time you have rounded the second corner. Reading helps. I read every night before sleep — Dickens, Christie, Dumas, Hardy — and I keep a pad on the bedside table. Some of the best chapters I have ever written started as a sentence I scribbled at three in the morning (pencil and note pad are on my bedside table).

If you are genuinely stuck — not on any particular sentence but on the entire book — go back to what made you want to write it in the first place. The original impulse. For Not a Penny More it was anger; for Kane & Abel it was the ambition to write a novel that spanned a century. The original impulse is the engine. If you have lost it, find it again before you write another word.

But the sand. The sand is the answer. Turn it. Write until it has run out. Tomorrow, do it again.

A few practical notes

• Write something — anything — for 10 minutes. The hardest part is starting. A timer set to 10 minutes is short enough that resistance gives way. Most writers find that once they start, they keep going.
• Move location. If you can’t write at your desk, write in a café, a library, the kitchen table, the garden. Place primes the brain.
• Skip ahead. If chapter 7 is blocking you, jump to chapter 12 — write the scene you most want to write. Come back to chapter 7 later.
• Lower the bar for the day. Tell yourself today’s writing will be terrible. Permission to write badly often produces the best pages. The polish comes in draft 4.
• Read for 30 minutes before you write. Not your own work — someone else’s. Reading primes your prose ear.
• Walk for 20 minutes. The problem you can’t solve at the desk solves itself between corner one and corner two.
• If you’ve been blocked for weeks, examine the project. Sometimes ‘writer’s block’ is the manuscript telling you it has a structural problem. If you can’t write because the next chapter doesn’t make sense — that’s not block, that’s the book asking to be re-outlined.