How I Beat Writers Block

Classic writers block takes two forms: 

  1. Getting up to a certain point then not being able to continue. You've written long and hard, and suddenly, at the end of the sentence, you can't think of what comes next. It doesn't matter how hard you try, the villain won't pick up the gun and the heroine stays home in her pajamas. After hours of staring at the screen, you decide maybe you'd make a good chef (writing is for pale bookworms and nervous journalists with big glasses, after all), so you buy a cookbook from Amazon and start googling french cooking terms. 
     
  2. Nothing to say. You've sat down to write, and you've written forty-five first sentences—and you don't like any of them. None of them catch on, each one more flaccid than the last, and every time you come up with something maybe even a little good, the burst of inspiration dies out like a shooting star landing in the ocean. Dead. Completely. Sunken to the dark seaweed-y depths to live with bottom dwellers and pale fish with large eyes. You get it.

I don't know of any diehard methods to beat writers block, but I can tell you what I do: Write. About writers block. I write about how I despise it, how it makes me feel worthless and miserable, how it robs me of all inspiration and love for writing that usually comes so naturally. I write about how frustrating it is to want to say something and not be able to, like the boy who wants to ask the pretty girl to dance but he just... can't... get... the... words... out... there... Pretty soon, I've written a paragraph. If I'm feeling particularly spiteful (which is rare—I may have ditzy spells, but I'm not vindictive by nature), I'll have a page. Suddenly (while my brain was learning french and my fingers were flying with wrathful vengeance against something so small and obnoxious), the heroine has put on her super-suit, the villain is holding up a bank, and the shooting star is resurrected in blazing glory.

It may not work for everyone—but it's better than staring at the screen in doleful misery. 

Maybe it will work for you.