In this third workshop, we’re going to think about ways to fuel our imagination as writers. The very prospect of a blank page is terrifying to some writers, holding them back and stopping them from writing anything.

Most people call this WRITER’S BLOCK.

But I’m going to call it something else, something I think will make it a little easier to overcome.

WRITER’S PAUSE.

See, I’ll let you into a little secret.  I don’t believe in writer’s block.  And I’ve been writing for fifteen years now. What I do believe in instead is the cold unpleasant feeling of having nothing to say.  I believe in the anxiety a sheet of white paper can provoke. I believe this is caused because sometimes writers forget that –

THE FIRST DRAFT IS NOT THE LAST.

If you put pressure on yourself to write something perfect, something flawless, something brilliant, you are, of course, setting yourself up to get it wrong.  But you can’t get writing wrong, there’s no such thing.  You can make mistakes when you write, sure, but you can’t get it so wrong that you can’t fix it later.

If you think that writers only write one draft then you are confusing writing, or any other creative act, with something far more banal.  See, the art of writing comes from re-writing and redrafting your stories – and I’ll say lots more about this when we get to a later workshop here on Wattpad: Sept 10th-Oct 8th – Take It To A New Level – Fixes For Your Fiction.  For now, I want you to keep in mind that writing should not be perfect first time.  What would be the point of doing it if it were that easy?

And so this is why I don’t think a blank page is something to worry you too much. If you teach yourself to forgive your mistakes, if you let yourself write as if no-one will ever read it, you’ll find that those days you have nothing to say number far fewer.  Those days you have nothing to say are PAUSES, not blocks.  They are moments when you can refuel, not moments to give up.

One other thing to keep in mind, and someone else told me this, I wish I could remember who: write your first draft for yourself.  Re-write later for someone else.

Confusing getting published with the fragile early words you put on the page makes even the best writers freeze up and get stuck.  You know the old saying, dance as if no-one’s watching? Well, write the same way.  Write as if no-one will ever read it.  Trust me, you’ll feel freer and less anxious when you let go and enjoy the power of your words. (And your work will be stronger and more likely to be enjoyed by other people when you do decide to share it because you have tapped into your true creative self.)

This week’s writing prompt:

This week we’re going to do a freewriting exercise.  Freewriting is a great way to loosen up the binds of ‘performance anxiety’ that a blank page can make you feel.  And freewriting is an excellent way to fuel your imagination – if you think of your imagination as a hungry monster (or giraffe, or cat, or something that needs to feed!), then think of freewriting as food.  When you freewrite, you let your imagination take over and you stop yourself from censoring your ideas, which is the best path to inspiration.

So, freewriting means writing WITHOUT STOPPING for a period of time.  I’ll give you a prompt and then you write, even if you just write the words I don’t know what to say over and over, that’s okay!

So, write for six minutes (time yourself) using this prompt, which was suggested to me by a workshop participant when I was teaching last year:

FAMILY REUNION

This workshop starts with some news that might be a bit of a downer:

Writing is hard.

Really hard.

I’m not trying to make any of you feel discouraged here. Precisely the opposite, in fact. I’m trying to bust the illusion that writing has to be easy to be any good.  I want to push away the notion that writers merrily sit back while the story just flows onto the page, line after perfect line, paragraph followed by perfect paragraph, plot slotting into place, characters fleshy and real.

Real writers find out pretty fast that you have to earn the good days.

This means that yes, sometimes, some rare and gorgeous days, the words do cascade onto the page and everything is easy. But many, many writing days are challenging. The writer takes wrong turns. Every sentence feels stiff and awkward until there is nothing more to say. The story is wooden and downright dull.

On these terrible writing days, your mind starts to play tricks on you, telling you that it isn’t worth writing the story at all, insisting you should give up.

Don’t give up.

Believe me, those days when it’s going badly are actually good for your writing. I know it sounds unlikely, but by accepting, even expecting difficult writing days, you are growing and improving as a writer. Writing shouldn’t be easy to be worth doing. In fact, what would be the point of doing it if it were easy all the time?

Your unique imagination and stories are worth the fight, they are worth the struggle and hard work.

Practically, there are two ways to deal with a challenging writing day.

1-   Push through it. Allow yourself to write badly and get words on the page. You can always edit them later.

2-   Walk away. I heard Martin Amis talk at a festival and he said that as he matured as a writer, he learned to walk away if the writing wasn’t going well. Take a stroll, do some gardening, cook, whatever, but let your mind relax into solving the problems on the page. Come back refreshed and ready to write.

I tend to push through on the page. A good friend of mine walks away when she is struggling. Either way works – you’ll have to figure out what works for you. Whichever way ends up being your way, remember that sometimes when you think you’re at a dead end, you’re not. You’ve only got to look at the situation differently to discover hidden doorways and paths to the perfect story…

This week’s writing prompt:

Think of this exercise as a metaphor for those trap doors in your mind that lead to unexpected places when you dare open them.

I want you to imagine that you walk into a room you thought you knew well and discover there is a secret trap door in the floor.

Where does it lead? Do you go in? What do you discover? Write up to 500 words describing what you find when you open the trap door.

This is the last of the five workshops in which we look at inspiration, writer’s block, and how to get ideas on the page. I hope you’re feeling like the last few workshops have given you some sense of how ideas are everywhere if you know how to look, of how to cope when you’re feeling overcome by the blank page, and of ways to research and get inspired to get your stories written.

This final week I’m giving you six great writing quotations that I think you might enjoy. I know I keep some of these close to hand for those moments when I find writing daunting, or for moments when the ‘idea-well’ has run dry. Taking these quotations as motivation is a great way to stay rooted with really talented authors, people who feel just as you do about getting their stories down. They may write very differently from you, but you can bet that they too feel that thrill of creativity, that passion for words, the excitement when a paragraph feels perfect, and that despair when it isn’t going well.

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.

-Hilary Mantel

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

-Stephen King

Writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all

-Charles Bukowski

 Eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, that’s the only way I know how to do it.

-Philip Roth

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

-John Steinbeck

Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.

-Anton Chekov

Think about each of these six quotations and figure out if they do something for you as a writer, then have a look and find others that inspire you.

Before we go on to the writing prompt, I want to go back to is my notion that ideas are everywhere. In the first couple of workshops, I talked about how Imagination + Observation = Inspiration. We looked at how to improve our powers of observation, we looked at how to overcome a blank page. Now we’re going to look at ways to exercise our imagination.

Think of the imagination as a muscle that needs to work out. Don’t worry, you’re not going to have to join some summer boot camp and sweat in out on a soggy field, no, working out the imagination requires very simple get-fit techniques.

1-   USE IT. Use your imagination every day. Ask yourself WHAT IF… every time you get a chance. Like: what if the sky fell, what if someone I thought I loved came through that door, what if I died right now, what if I found a buried treasure? By asking what if, you open yourself to imaginative gold.

2-   Practice. This is almost the same as using your imagination, but it requires you to take your daydreams and write them down. Your night dreams too. Write, write, write. Get it wrong, get it right, write.

3-   Read, listen, observe, experience, live. Your imagination is made rich with the stuff of every day life. Everything you do adds to your imagination so remind yourself that even when you’re not writing, you’re still open for stories.

This week’s writing prompt:

This week I want you to imagine that you are sitting in your home when an unexpected letter arrives addressed to you. What does the letter say? Who is it from? How do you feel? What do you do?

Write up to 500 words as a POSTCARD story – that’s right, the story needs to be COMPLETE in 500 words. This should challenge you to gather an entire narrative in a short space, working your imagination and perhaps inspiring you later to write something longer.