5 Tips to Fight Writer's Block

“The work of the world does not wait to be done by perfect people.”

—Source Unknown

Have you ever had writer’s block?  That paralyzing anxiety that convinces you that any word you put down on paper would be meaningless so you refuse to even try?  I used to get it ALL the time.  It is hard to beat, but not impossible.

First, get over the fear of being wrong, doing wrong, saying something wrong.  

The world will not come to a halt if you split an infinitive.  Mrs. Allen, the toughest English teacher the sixth grade has ever seen, does not stand behind you, her red pen in hand ready to slice and dice your manuscript.  Just write your words and save them to your hard drive.

Second, embrace the delete key.

Hitting that delete key is one of the greatest joys a writer can have.  In a flash, your mistake, your inane sentence is gone, finished, forever.  You can’t dwell on it, can’t go back and reread it, can’t see it.  So how do you know you even wrote it?  You can’t prove it, can you?  It’s gone. 

Third, you can’t fix something that isn’t there. 

You need to write without editing.  Just write.  Write anything and everything you can think of.  Don’t worry about too many adverbs or “to be” verbs.  Those can all be taken care of later.  Just get the words on paper because words are like rabbits and tend to multiply placed in close proximity to each other.

Fourth, get off the computer.  

Print out everything you have written.  The good stuff, the bad stuff, the scrap file, everything.  If you still haven’t shaken your writer’s block, you need to get physical with your manuscript. Grab a legal pad, a pair of scissors and a roll of tape or a glue stick.  Legal pads run 8.5x14 and give you more length but not too much for physically cutting and pasting your manuscript together.  You can also handwrite transitions between the cut outs.

Why does this work better than cutting and pasting on the computer?  I don’t know exactly.  Maybe it makes the manuscript more tangible rather than lines on a screen.  Maybe the change in situation refocuses the brain.  All I know is that it works when nothing else will to jump-start my writing and creativity.

Fifth,  don’t give in to it.  

No one’s perfect.  No best seller was ever written in one draft.  Don’t even call it writer’s block.  Don’t give it that acknowledgment.  Make yourself write anything—new words to your favorite song, new dialogue for the inane sitcom your kids watched last night, great comebacks for the next time your sister makes you crazy.  Do anything to get the words to flow.  The next thing you know is you’re ready to work on that manuscript.

Amy Munnell is has been a freelance writer and editor for over 25 years with her work appearing in various publications including the Chocolate for a Woman's Soul series, Saying Goodbye, From the Heart, Points North, ByLine, Athens Magazine and Georgia Magazine. Find Amy on Twitter: @amunnell

Crafting the Good Question: 4 Keys to Preparing for an Interview

The cornerstone of good writing is research and the most common prompt to research is a question. Who, what, where, when and how were Lesson 1 in my high school journalism class.  “This story is about So-and-So who wants what?” is how I learned to focus a screenplay in college four years later.  A writer can’t be afraid to ask questions, but you can’t just jump in with the first question that pops into your head either.

SELECT AN ARTICLE TYPE

Articles come in many forms and with many purposes.  Before you begin writing out your questions, know what kind of article you're writing.  The information you need for a travel article differs greatly from the information in a profile.  A how-to will not require the depth of feature article.  It is important to know what information you'll need before you draft your list of questions.

SHOOT FOR A PARAGRAPH  

Once you know what to ask, carefully word your questions.  Never ask a yes or no question.  Instead of asking “Do you like your job?” try “Tell me some of the aspects of your job you like.” The first question gives you one word.  The second can spark a paragraph. 

In the same vein, try to avoid one-word answer questions, such as “When did you start working for this company?” An alternative can be “How did you come to work for this company?”  Dates don't add much to the word count.  Again, shoot for the paragraph.

THE RULE OF THREE  

Have multiple versions of questions on sensitive subjects.  In comedy, you can run the same joke three times.  After that it isn't funny.  The same holds for interviewing - you can visit a issue three times before you turn your subject off. 

Say you have to interview two rival businessmen who have teamed up for huge event.  You know they don't like each other and are at odds over many business issue, but this event, if successful, will give both of their businesses a big boost.

Ask “What effect did your rivalry have on the planning of the event?”  and you'd get a firm denial and an alienated subject. Have several versions of hot-topic questions to pose at different times during the interview.  “What sort of obstacles did you have to overcome in the initial organization?”  “How did you coordinate all the different officials and their staffs?” “How do you imagine the planning of future events of this scope?”  

KEEP HIM TALKING

Finally, try to make your questions fit into the conversation.  Be prepared to scribble notes for follow up questions while your subject is answering the present one.  Or better yet anticipate what kind of follow up questions your subject’s answers may spark. How? As author Paul Auster said, “The truth of the story lies in the details.” Know your subject: his job, family, etc.  

Sometimes my questions take a rewrite or two to get them the way I want them, but the pay off comes when during the interview my subject blurts “Oh! That’s a good question!” 

Amy Munnell is has been a freelance writer and editor for over 25 years with her work appearing in various publications including the Chocolate for a Woman's Soul series, Saying Goodbye, From the Heart, Points North, ByLine, Athens Magazine and Georgia Magazine. Find Amy on Twitter: @amunnell

News from the Twitterverse

I was going to call this article "Do You Tweet?" but I thought, Doesn't everybody?

Not quite.  According to Statistic Brain, 645,750,000 people do with 135,000 joining every day.  That's a lot of people!

But it is not EVERYbody so for the few people, writer-people, who don't live their lives in 140-character spurts, I'm trying out this column to share writing-related news I have found on Twitter.  This, of course, is not everything out there.  I don't follow everybody. And, obviously, I'm no Twitter expert.  Still, I believe this will be helpful to writers.  For instance,

Two Agents Seeking Authors

Connor Goldsmith (‏@dreamoforgonon) posted on March 14:

"I'm actively looking to build my list. You can see my new submission guidelines at http://forewordliterary.com/foreword/connor-goldsmith/"

Writer Unboxed ‏(@WriterUnboxed) posted on Mar 3

"AGENT ALERT: Cate Hart seeks fantasy, steampnk, historical, mystery, magical realism, erotica, LGBT, YA, MG http://bit.ly/1jLWrXA  #WUAgent"  

Note:  This Twitter post links to Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents Blog from Aug. 2012, but apparently she is still actively seeking clients. Meet Chuck at the Southeastern Writers Workshop will be June 13-17, 2014 at Epworth by the Sea on scenic St. Simons Island, Georgia. 

A Call for Submissions

Literary agent John M. Cusick (‏@johnmcusick) posted on March 4

"Submissions are now open for Issue 5 of @ArmchairShotgun! Submit your amazing poetry and fiction today! http://armchair.broadlatitude.com/submit-to-as/"

Follow SWA on Twitter: @SWAwriters

~~ Amy Munnell

Amy is the Editor of The Purple Pros, and has been an SWA member since 1990, serving on the Board of Directors from 1993-2007 and again from 2011 to the present.  She has been a freelance writer and editor for 25 years with her work appearing in various publications including the Chocolate for a Woman's Soul series, Saying Goodbye, From the Heart, Points North, ByLine, Athens Magazine and Georgia Magazine. Find Amy on Twitter: @amunnell

FREE-Lancing: When Should You Write for Free?

Should You Write for Free?

Ask that question to your writer friends and you're liable to get as many different answers as you have friends.  It is a question that those of us in this profession face often.  There are times and places where it is reasonable to give your time and talent away, but make sure you know exactly what you are giving and what you are getting in exchange.

What if it is a "really good cause"?

Whenever you're asked or just thinking of giving away your services for a charitable cause, ask yourself three questions:

1. Will you want to use the material again? - If so, check the copyright status of anything you produce.  Do you retain the rights?  Is this classified as a publication, thus using your "first rights"?  Is it a work for hire where all the rights stay with the organization? If the rights are compromised, you may not be able to sell the material again without a major rewrite and restructuring.

2. What kind of exposure will your work receive?  Yes, you're working for free, but you can still benefit from your efforts professionally.  Look at the size and the reputation of the group.  Will you be credited either with bylines or in an event program?  Who will see your work?  Working for an event or cause can put you in front of people you might not otherwise meet.  It could mean more work down the road so make sure you can exploit the experience to you advantage.

3. Do you really and truly support this cause? If so, forget the other questions and do the best job you can.

What if a website wants to publish your story but offers no pay?

Website publication is "real" whether or not the site pays you.  In writers guidelines more and more magazines specifically mention that they don't want work that has been published on "a third party or nonpersonal website."  Even if the website says you retain all your rights, other editors might not feel the same way.

But as with writing for charity, look at the exposure and your future plans for the material.  If you're offering a piece point specific to the website, then you probably can't sell it elsewhere so the publication credit will be the only thing you can get for it.  Also if this is in an area or genre you have no or little previous publishing history, and the website is a prominent fixture in this area, let the byline and exposure be your payment and your foot in the door.  However, next time keep looking for a paying market.

When shouldn't you write for free?

Writers often lament that their families and friends don't see their freelance work as a real job and try to take advantage so the number one reason you shouldn't write for free is when you're "guilted" into the job.  You love your family and you don't want to resent the intrusion but you will at least internally and that's not healthy.  Besides writing is a "real job" and you should get paid for your time and talent.  Who would expect a plumber to fix a clogged sink then not present a bill?

Don't write for free if you don't feel passionately about the job, the cause or at least some aspect of the situation.  You likely won't do a stellar job and it could reflect badly on you with the people involved.  Exposure is good, but make sure it is exposure to your best work.

Finally, don't write for free if you can't afford it.  Clippings are great.  Every writer needs bylines and resume builders, but he also needs money for his bills.  No amount of exposure or prestige is going to pay your rent or put food on the table.  

There's the old adage "You get what you paid for."  If you write your best, you should be paid the best. Right?

Calling the Muse

"Keep your eyes open on Thursday for a special opportunity," the note said.

OK--it wasn’t a note. It was my fortune from my fortune cookie, but it makes a great opening line for an article on writing prompts.  What can you do with that line?  Doesn't it get you wondering as to what the opportunity could be…what makes it special...and will it really come true?

A good writing prompt will spawn all sorts of questions for a writer to ponder and attempt to answer.  When you are suffering through the summer doldrums or maybe you have a minor case of writer's block, a writing prompt can jumpstart your muse into action.  You can find writing prompts just about anywhere.  Writing websites usually have pages of them.  Here are few techniques I've learned for building my own file of writing prompts.

Ripped From the Headlines!

Calliope, Greek muse of writing

The "Law & Order" franchises on TV used this prompt all the time.  They say truth is stranger than fiction so why not look to the news for ideas?  If you write nonfiction, take a national headline or subject and work the local angle.  If you write fiction, use the basic facts of the story to build your own conflict between characters. Every news story has a personal conflict on some level.  

I once read a report that quoted Amy Winehouse's father Mitch announcing the singer had emphysema.  At age 24, Winehouse, because of her drug use and smoking, had a disease that usually afflicts people two or three times her age.  How many article ideas can you glean from that without mentioning the singer?  On the fiction side, you can put your heroine in her shoes and give her the battle to win or you could take the father's point of view and the struggle he'll have.

Read the newspaper, at least one, every day to find prompts to get your creative juices flowing.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words!

Many years ago, I took a class at the SWA Writers Workshop with a wonderful author several years ago.  LeRoy handed out photographs he pulled from magazines, instructing each of us to write the first page of a novel or short story based in the photo.  These were random photos.  I remember one was Marky Mark in his Calvin Klein briefs, while another was a deserted highway in Utah's Monument Valley.

Years later my sister sent us a book that was one of her favorites because it was bizarre. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, author of The Polar Express and Jumanji among others, supposedly features drawings by Harris Burdick with titles and then a one-line caption.  The drawings all have a fantastic element to them, sometimes funny, other times disturbing. Wouldn't be fun to sit down with those drawings and captions and concoct a story around them?

Images are great writing prompts, especially for fiction.  Keep a file of photos, illustrations, postcards even that capture your imagination.

You Can Quote Me!

I collect quotations.  Some spawn scenes in my head that I have used in my artwork. When I edited The Purple Pros before, I always began my column with a quotation from a famous person. Most of the time the quote sparked the column's topic, but sometimes it just summarized the idea.

Quotations can inspire us for many reasons, including prompting ideas.  I keep a file just for interesting quotes on my computer.  When I'm stuck for an idea, I read through them all to see what will spark, like my fortune cookie did.  Oh!--If I do find a "special opportunity" on Thursday, you'll be the first to know.

3 Ways to Keep Yourself Writing

When I interview authors, I always ask them what advice have they received and what advice would they give. The most common piece of advice is "Put your butt in the chair and write."  Writing is a very solitary job with rejection lurking at the end of every page.  So how do you keep motivated?  How do you keep your butt in the chair?  Here are some tips I've picked up for myself and from other people.

Reward Yourself

The creative muse can be very childish, and like a child, sometimes you have to bribe it into performing.  Promise yourself a token of appreciation if you can just get this chapter done or mail that proposal off.  The token can be anything from a walk in the sun with your dog to an hour of guilt-free Internet surfing to your favorite Starbucks diet-busting specialty coffee on the way home from the post office. Make the promise when you sit down and watch how that little incentive can get your fingers flying on the keyboard.

Embrace Rejection

Writers get rejected.  There's no way around it.  Not everybody is going to think you're the second coming of Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth or Virginia Woolf.  When I had my first play reading at a writer's conference nearly 20 years ago, five people got up and walked out halfway through.  I was upset when I told my sister about it later.  An actress, she had rejection in her life, too, but she put a positive spin on it.  "At least you made them do something. You got a reaction."

A speaker at a conference told of a man who put every rejection slip he got up on the wall so he could see them when he worked.  He wanted to paper the whole office because it showed how hard he was working.  Another writer friend took that idea and modified it slightly.  You've heard the saying "You've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die."  She says you have to be rejected 100 times before you make a sale and she sees each rejection as taking her one step closer to her next sale.

Try to find the positive in every rejection.  It isn't personal so turn it around and make it a motivating force in your writing life.

Identify Your Villain

I'm not talking about a character for your hero to battle in your next book.  You need a villain in your writing life.  Mine is a journalism professor who asked me to leave his magazine writing class because I was "only an English major" and didn't have the journalistic background for his class.  So where have I sold most of my work?  To magazines, and the kicker is that five years after that class, I was at a workshop where he was teaching.  My work had begun appearing in local publications, and on a break between sessions, he sat down beside me and said he had been talking to an editor of a new magazine, then asked if he could give him my number.  How do you like me now?

I truly believe that it is human nature, especially American human nature, to strive to prove somebody wrong.  Find your villain - the one who doesn't believe in you - and use him or her to motivate you to keep your butt in that chair writing.  Force him to believe with every publication you add to your résumé.

3 Tips for Beating Writer's Block…

Tip #1: "Give in to the dark side."

Get over the fear of being wrong, doing wrong, saying something wrong.  The world will not come to a halt if you split an infinitive.  Mrs. Allen, the toughest English teacher the sixth grade has ever seen, does not stand behind you, her red pen in hand ready to slice and dice your manuscript.

You can’t fix something that isn’t there. Write your words, the good, the bad, and the grammatically questionable. Just write. Don’t worry about too many adverbs or “to be” verbs.  Forget misspellings or vague word choices.  You can pull out your dictionary or your style manual later.  Just get the words on paper because words are like rabbits and tend to multiply when placed in close proximity to each other.

Tip #2: "Don't throw the baby out with the bath."

When you're revising or editing, keep a "scrap file."  Instead of deleting paragraphs or pages, cut and paste them into the scrap file, just in case there's a hidden gem in there that might come out with a little extra polishing. Maybe that line is simply in the wrong place or that scene isn't bad.  It just needs to be shown from a different point of view.  

If you simply hit the delete key, your words and ideas will be gone forever. The scrap file lets you have the opportunity to reconsider your words later if you need too.

Tip #3: "Get physical."

If you find yourself with not only writer's block, but also editor's block on a project, try something drastic.  Print out everything you've written, the manuscript, the scrap file, even your notes. Make sure everything is double-spaced and has wide margins for your notes and rewrites.  Grab a pen and go through your manuscript the old-fashioned way, line by line.  

You can take it a step further.  Instead of making notes or drawing arrows to move lines or paragraphs, cut your manuscript apart.  Grab a legal pad and some tape or glue stick and put the manuscript back together again in the new order.  The extra inches of a legal pad (8.5x14 v. 8.5x11 inches) as oppose to printer paper give you more room to work. You can leave spaces to write in new transitions between the cut-outs. 

Why does this work better than cutting and pasting on the computer?  Maybe it makes the manuscript more tangible rather than lines on a screen.  The manuscript has length, has weight, has a form you can't feel on the computer. Or maybe the change in situation stimulates the brain to think differently. Who can say?  When you're in a rut, doesn't it make sense to climb out of it any way you can? 

~~ Amy Munnell

Amy is the Editor of The Purple Pros, and has been an SWA member since 1990, serving on the Board of Directors from 1993-2007 and again from 2011 to the present.  She has been a freelance writer and editor for 25 years with her work appearing in various publications including the Chocolate for a Woman's Soul series, Saying Goodbye, From the Heart, Points North, ByLine, Athens Magazine and Georgia Magazine. 

Keeping It Simple…But Not Stupid

For what grade level do you write?

I was first faced with this question in college. Eager to start my training as a professional writer, I enrolled in Advanced Composition immediately after I finished the Freshman English required courses.  An upper level class, I was the only freshman in the room, but at 19, I didn’t know how to be intimidated.

My classmates wrote papers about legalizing marijuana, the rebellion in El Salvador and gender bias in the workplace, while I turned in an essay on the evils of cornflakes.  Each got picked apart, but mine got laughs at least.

Next my professor gave us the Flesch Reading Ease Readability Formula for finding to what grade level our writing appealed.  After we had a chance to apply it to our work, he went through the class asking for results.

“Twelfth” said the pothead with the fuzzy hair.  The feminist said “College.” My face reddened with each response as the professor came closer to me.  “Eleventh,” the foreign policy guru next to me said.

“Eighth,” I shrugged.  Dr. R. only nodded.  What did that mean?  OK, now I was intimidated.

What is the Flesch Reading Ease Readability Formula?

Developed by Rudolph Flesch, an author and educator, in 1949, the formula is one of the oldest and most accurate formulas for determining the ease with which something can be read.  Several U.S. Government Agencies use it and, of course, it used with school textbooks.

To use it, isolate a passage in you article, book, etc., then count the number of sentences, followed by the number of words in the passage.  Divide the number of words by the number of sentences to get the Average Sentence Length (ASL).

Take a single paragraph in that same passage and count the number of words, then count the number of syllables in that paragraph.  Divide the number of syllables by the number of words to get the Average Syllables per Word (ASW).

Multiply the ASL by 1.015 and the ASW by 84.6.  Next subtract those new numbers from 206.835 to get your Readability Ease (RE). Here's the formula written out:

206.835 - (ASL x 1.015) - ASW x 84.6) = RE

The scores break down like this:

90 to 100 - easily understood by 5th grade students

80 to 90 - easily understood by 6th grade students

70 to 80 - easily understood by 7th grade students

60 to 70 - easily understood by 8th grade students

50 to 60 - easily understood by 9th grade students

40 to 50 - easily understood by 10th grade students

30 to 40 - easily understood by 11th grade students

20 to 30 - easily understood by 12th grade students

Below 20 - easily understood by college students or college graduates

This article's RE is 79.9, which means the average 7th grader can understand it and probably most 6th graders.

“Which of you is the most likely to publish in today’s media?” asked our professor.  We decided either the pothead or the foreign policy guru, but he pointed at me.

According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the average American reads on the 8th grade level, and as Dr. R. informed us, newspapers and magazines are written on that level.  Writer and editor Kathy Krajco believes all Americans have come to expect "writing that doesn't tax you with abstractions and unnecessarily big or uncommon words" in both nonfiction and fiction so if a writer wants to be published, he must write on that level.

This is not to say you have to write down to the American reader. It is more about writing in "Plain English" - verbs that convey action, concrete nouns and adjectives that communicate your ideas effectively, and varied but straightforward sentence structures. Don't distract your reader with, as Krajco says, "the fog of excess verbiage." Don't make your reader go looking for your point. Readers are too busy today to go hunting and they'll move on to something else.

“Keep it simple.  Keep it clear.  Keep it focused," my professor instructed 32 years ago. "And you’ll be more likely to get published anywhere.”

~~ Amy Munnell

Amy is the Editor of The Purple Pros, and has been an SWA member since 1990, serving on the Board of Directors from 1993-2007 and again from 2011 to the present.  She has been a freelance writer and editor for 25 years with her work appearing in various publications including the Chocolate for a Woman's Soul series, Saying Goodbye, From the Heart, Points North, ByLine, Athens Magazine and Georgia Magazine.