Writer's Block

I push through it by acknowledging, nine times out of ten, I really am not suffering from any kind of block whatsoever. What I'm suffering from is an insecurity about my writing. Once I remind myself perfection is unachievable and, at best, subjective, then I am able to get over my bad self and continue writing.

Great way of looking at it, Mark. I think that's what I'm doing right now - suffering from my insecurity. Two-star reviews will do that to you, but - in the words of Tina Turner - I will survive. Hopefully my hair doesn't end up like hers, though. That would be bad.

To  me writer's block is a crappy plot.  I stop writing when the plot stops being thrilling and/or compelling.  To fix this I start thinking up strange scenarios - what if...she jumped up on the table and started making a scene.  I laughed at that.  At first.  Wait - yeah...what if she did jump on the table, and then...and then...and then.

That's how I do it.  And she did jump up on that table and a few minutes later a whole bunch of people were lying around in a gooey heap of death.  It was awesome.  And she didn't even kill them, it's just that little act of defiance sparked another line of thinking that pulled it all together.

I find that looking at my bank account, or categorizing my stack of bills will usually completely cure the first signs of writer's block.

JanneCO said:

To me writer's block is a crappy plot. I stop writing when the plot stops being thrilling and/or compelling. To fix this I start thinking up strange scenarios - what if...she jumped up on the table and started making a scene. I laughed at that. At first. Wait - yeah...what if she did jump on the table, and then...and then...and then.

That's how I do it. And she did jump up on that table and a few minutes later a whole bunch of people were lying around in a gooey heap of death. It was awesome. And she didn't even kill them, it's just that little act of defiance sparked another line of thinking that pulled it all together.

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That sounds like a great way of dealing with it. If something is really hard and/or boring for us to write, how interesting will it be for the reader to read? I did something similar, and it created a whole new subplot that made my villain feel more layered.