The greatest book that never was... 5 cures for Writers' block

Ah yes, writers' block. The horrible blankness inside your head, the desperation clawing at your brain, the internal harpy-like shrieking of:

WRITE YOU IDIOT! WRITE ANYTHING AT ALL! JUST A PARAGRAPH. OKAY, A SENTENCE. ALRIGHT THEN DUMBASS, TWO WORDS THAT VAGUELY MEAN  SOMETHING... 

Fear wraps his talons around your now cold heart and whispers in your ear *give up, you loser. Writing is for imaginative people. You're just a pretender. A useless hack. Give up now. Quit while you're ahead. It's the smart thing to do.*

Credit: Vector4free.com

No? Just me then? Well, anyway, however it makes you feel, it seems to catch us all out during our writing life and the Internet is chock-full of ways to cure it. Or at least postpone it until the next delightful muse-kidnapper appears. 

Here are five ideas that could help you banish it. For a while anyway:

• Get out in the fresh air. Take a walk (or a run if you're that way inclined...). Or, if you're really, really lazy, just stand in the garden for ten minutes and stare at the sky. Don't think about that pesky storyline that's going nowhere or that piece of dialogue that 's horribly clunky and stilted. Take a few minutes to get a bit zen. Zone out. Enjoy the flowers, kick up those autumn leaves, lift your face to the rain. As the ever awesome En Vogue would say:

Free Your Mind

• Do something creative that's not writing. Drawing, crochet, sewing. Bake a cake, which has the added benefit of providing important sustenance ready for your mammoth writing session where you not only smash writers block into the ground like the Incredible Hulk but write your BEST EVER Scene. One that would make Angels weep and Shakespeare cry in his grave. Ahem. What I mean to say is - force the creative buzz to get going by doing something else and maybe that impossible chapter ending will just pop right into your head. 

The Incredible Hulk. Smash!

• Organise your bookshelves. Or go to your local (hopefully independent) bookshop and take a look at their tables or staff pick titles. Read the blurbs, peek inside. Take inspiration from what you read and use those ideas to kick start your own work. 

• Try free writing for fifteen minutes. Write whatever comes into your head and don't stop writing until the timer goes. If you start to freeze up, write your thoughts. Put onto paper the actual words 'I don't know what else to write. I can't think of anything', etc until even the tiniest grain of an idea pops into your head. Run with it. Let your mind wander and go off on tangents. Write everything that comes into your head. The idea is to build up your momentum and get you into the flow of writing again. You never know what these raw, in-cohesive ramblings might inspire.

I'm not suggesting this was the product of free writing... 



But this one might have been

• Or go to this super awesome site. It's the Holy Grail for writers suffering from the dreaded BLOCK. Writing prompt generators, articles on famous authors, creative writing exercises and more. Beware though. It is a serious time suck. Don't get stuck on the character name generator. You have been warned. 

1

Five tips for editing your novel!

Many writers dread the editing process and, I freely admit, I used to be one of them but you know what? After three edits of the same novel, I have finally discovered that it can be quite fun. Yes, fun!

Okay, well maybe not THIS much fun.

When you've left a novel alone for a long time, revisiting it is like meeting up with friends you haven't seen for a couple of years. Things have changed in your life, you have new experiences to talk about, different stories to tell. Everything is good and glowing and exciting. You rediscover their funny little quirks and find that you really missed their self-deprecating sense of humour.

And then you introduce a new friend to the equation and they love your old friend. They love your old friend so much, they keep bugging you for more get togethers. They tell you things about your old friend that they've noticed - things you hadn't thought about. Seeing your old friend through your new friend's eyes really helps you appreciate all the good things about them.

Of course, the new friend also likes to gossip about the old friend pointing out (in a totally non-bitchy way, natch) the annoying things about them too. And their flaws. But this is all okay because, once you know all the things that aren't quite 'right' about your old friend, you can set about changing them. At least, you can if the old friend happens to be a book you wrote (or maybe if you're a psychiatrist. Do they even have friends?!?)

So, this is where I'm at right now. Having given a friend my manuscript to read (purely as a reader. She doesn't write which, I think, is a really good thing), she's given me a different perspective from previous writing buddies that have read it and a few things that require clarification or beefing up a little. To that end, my top tip is here, at number one in the list:

1. Get somebody who has never read it before to read through it. Fresh eyes are the best! Believe me, they will pick out things that are missing like WHOLE SCENES. Good grief, you say, how can you miss out entire scenes? Well, after a brutal editing round last time and all of the story residing in your head, it's easy to 'think' bits in when you, the writer, are reading through your own story.
2. Print it out in a different font/size/colour to whatever you typed it in. Apparently, this tricks your brain into thinking it's something fresh you're reading and not the book you've been working on for the past eleven years months.
3. Jot down the main points of each chapter as you read them. Then you can check that continuity is alive and well in your novel and someone isn't enjoying a beautiful scenic bike ride through the English countryside when, two chapters previously, they were talking about how they never learnt to ride a bike and haven't learnt how to in the in between chapters.
4. Read it out loud or, at least, read aloud your dialogue. If it sounds stunted and clumsy when you read it out, then it needs to be changed. You can get programmes that will read text for you - try a free trial and see if that works for you before splashing out on it or check out this free text to voice software.
5. Have lots of chocolate on standby. Let's face it, this is just a top tip for life in general.

Stick your face in one of these when it all gets a bit much

And, if you have no idea how to even begin editing, then take a look at these links:

http://writerunboxed.com/2012/12/08/a-simple-approach-to-revisions/

http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/weeding-or-editing.html

I like Writer Unboxed so much, I'm adding it to my regular blog visit list - loads of really informative and succinct articles and interesting author interviews, etc. Go and check it out!

Married to a 40 year old...

WOW! The Chardmeister is 40 now!

 We dropped Lady M off at the olds and scarpered to London for the weekend. It's funny how holidays or short breaks are never the relaxing time they are meant to be. We packed a fair bit into the weekend - Friday night dinner at Sarastro's (fabulously fun and garish decor, average food and surly staff - I'm not going to recommend you try this one), Oxford St, the British Museum, Libertys, Fortnum and Masons, Covent Garden, Picadilly Circus on Saturday followed by 'The Phantom of the Opera' at Her Majesty's Theatre (I can't deny it, I loved it. The production was really good, the sets clever and atmospheric and I'm always a sucker for great singing) and lunch at The Ivy on Sunday (lovely food, impeccable service and Jo Woods was there - the only celebrity spot of the weekend) followed by a quick visit to Buckingham Palace. Phew.

With all that excitement out of the way and the Abingdon Writers blog all tidied up and sorted, it's time to use this week to whip my novel into shape and start sending it out. To this end, I have purchased the kindle version of Nicola Morgan's 'How to Write a Great Synopsis' and practically promised a member of Abingdon Writers that I WILL submit next week. 

The Scream by Edvard Munch

The book is currently £1 on Amazon until the end of January - click on the link above to order it! I am hoping that this book plus enough time to get on with writing a query letter, blurb and rewriting my current synopsis plus getting those all important first three chapters as good as they can be, will aid me on my quest to be published.

I have been trawling the Internet for useful advice on submissions (a brilliant displacement activity which easily becomes intense procrastination as you follow all the different links helpfully put up by authors, agents and publishers). I digress - here are some of the ones I think make a lot of sense! 

• http://kate-harrison.com/for-writers/advice-on-agents
• http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/
• http://queryshark.blogspot.com/
• http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/
• http://www.mslexia.co.uk/getpublished/getpublished.php

Of course, you should also get yourself a copy of 'Writers and Artists Yearbook'. There's loads of useful articles in there as well as a complete listing of all UK literary agents. Once you've narrowed down which agents cover your genre, check them out individually too. It's time consuming but worth it.  And then, take that wobbly, angst-filled walk to the post office and force your madly clutching fingers to let go of that envelope.