The Secret to Writer’s Block: Guest Post - Armand Rosamilia
All The World’s A Stage: Beating Writer’s Block
By Armand Rosamilia
I’m going to toss this out there to start: I don’t struggle with writer’s block. I have an easy system I use each and every day and it goes like this:
1. I have 10-12 open projects at any given moment. About half of them are contracted short stories, novellas and novels with publishers, so there is incentive to get them done by a deadline
2. Fear of having to go back to working in the ‘real world’ is always in the back of my mind. I worked retail management jobs for years and hated every second of it. Nothing worse than having to deal with nasty customers, inept bosses and fellow workers, and all for an awful salary and long, long days.
But I have encountered writers’ block in the past, especially before going full-time as a writer and while working those soul-sucking retail jobs. I learned a few lessons along the way I enjoy passing along to newer authors I mentor from time to time.
We’ve been inundated with the writing advice Write What You Know.
It’s not really about only writing about people and jobs you’ve done. Hopefully, you’ve never shoved a pickaxe into anyone’s head and buried them, yet writers write about killing people all the time. I’ve never actually baked an apple pie but I can write a character doing it. Right?
Mmm. Apple Pie. Anyway…
Even though you can technically write about anything you want, there needs to be some common sense rules to follow or unfollow (we’re creative types, so we can do whatever we want!).
I like to travel. I have an awesome wife who also loves to travel. I’m not talking jetting to Paris or Rome for the weekend. I’m a writer, after all… I can pay the bills and buy too many books, but I’m not rich by any stretch.
But we travel quite a bit up and down the East Coast. Either for conventions, book signings, baseball games or to visit New Jersey, where I was born and raised. We hit all points in-between whenever possible. We’ll ignore chain restaurants and find all the local places to eat. We’ll check out weird places to visit. We love museums, if by museum you mean the Pez Museum, Comic Book Museum, Baseball Hall of Fame, and any other we can find.
As a writer, I watch everyone and anyone. They are all future characters. They are locals with accents, they eat strange foods, they have strange sayings, they wear some strange outfits.
Whenever I’m stuck for a character or a story idea or just feeling lazy and would rather binge-watch Netflix instead of working, I refer to the two items above. If they aren’t motivating enough, I go back through my memories. Remember the grandma with purple hair in Sandusky, Ohio? How about the drag queen at the gas station in South Carolina, who offered me some of his M&M’s? So many characters so little time to write them all.
Writer’s block is the mind killer. It’s the negative thoughts that trip you up. Your brain is shouting there’s nothing in here. Nothing to see. Go away. Nothing left to write. Stick a fork in you because you’re done.
When that story just won’t work itself out and those characters aren’t behaving and letting you know what comes next, I’ll start something new. Even if it isn’t a story I need to finish or will need. No writing is wasted. I’ve cannibalized so many of these flash fiction pieces over the years, these scenes between Purple Hair Grandma and Drag Queen M&M Sharer, that it never goes to waste.
It’s all practice. And it gets the creative juices flowing. It helps you solve the puzzle: what comes next?
A writer never stops writing, even when he/she is out and about. Need some crazy characters? Go sit in Walmart for an hour. You’ll see all kinds of weird. I’m lucky to have a wife who isn’t creative but she’s an eavesdropper like me. We’ll listen in on conversations at the next table in a restaurant and she’ll want to know what’s going to happen next. So many of those people, their words, have appeared in my stories over the past thirty years.
Writers block, for me, is a matter of what’s important. Netflix or getting paid to make things up.
I enjoy traveling and eating and paying the electric bill, so… refer to the two rules above. Always.
Thanks for reading my babble and hopefully it helps!
Armand Rosamilia
Twitter: @ArmandAuthor
**This is a guest post- all content and images were provided by the guest author and are the views of that author**
