Ask The Expert ... Getting Back in the Writing Groove

Question: "How can a writer get his groove back?"

Answer: So, summer’s over and you’re finding it tough to climb back in the writing saddle? I feel your pain, even though your writer’s pain is unique to you. I’ve got my own writer’s pain, and getting back in the writing groove after, perhaps, an entire summer off, is something I understand. Oh boy, do I.

Writing is hard. So too is coal-mining. With each one, you end up with a bad back, but at least with writing, you don’t get Black Lung.

The more I write, the more I understand the terrible rigor it entails. For the beginning writer, it’s more difficult. Let me compare it to romance ... some of you have perhaps never been in love. Some have. I hope, if you have been in love, that you have never been dumped. A broken heart is the worst, especially the first one. That’s the broken heart you think you won’t be able to survive, because you have no experience in surviving one. Once you gut it through the first soul-crushing aftermath of a ruined romance, you realize that life will go on and you will not be this miserable every day until eternity. The second broken heart hurts just as much, but, it’s easier. Because you survived the first one, you know you will survive this one. You have experience.

Writing is the same.

When it’s going badly, you think you won’t survive it. When you’re a baby writer and it’s going like sandpaper on your eyes, you think the bleakest of bleak thoughts and nothing will console you. Even if Heidi Klum or George Clooney dropped in with Mai Tais, it wouldn’t help... but, if you stay at your desk and keep chipping away at the disastrous dreck of a wall that confronts you, you will eventually break through. But you must have faith that your tiny chips will at last provide that eureka moment. It’s like at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ... when the lumbering truck of Dip crashes through the warehouse wall ... revealing the sunny and bright shining path to happiness on the other side.

There are ways to get to that breakthrough earlier, with less pain.

First, you need to know that the agony of writing is normal. You are not alone. You are not crazy. Would they pay William Goldman millions to do something easy?

Second, and after this one, you can probably forget the rest... Have a routine. I can’t over-emphasize this. Write every day. Six days a week. Fifteen minutes. An hour. If you do not write every day, you are not a writer. And, getting back in the groove after time off becomes next to impossible.

It’s a butt-in-seat kinda thing. If you aren’t sitting down doing it, odds are, you won’t get anything done.

And when your butt is in the seat, write. Even if nothing happens. Even if all you write is “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over and over and over. ... Write crap. Write about baking cookies with your dad. Write your character’s laundry list. Write about an incident that happened to her in grade school that bears no resemblance to whatever quicksand you’re mired in... Write something. If your fingers are moving, sooner or later, your brain will engage and actual useful writing will appear. Like magic!

Set a schedule AND STICK WITH IT. Everyone in your family, or your roommates must respect it. When my two little boys would come bursting in my office, if I was in the middle of a thought, I would hold my hand up like a traffic cop and they would whirl around and leave. They’re in therapy now, but I got my work done.

Find a time when you can be left alone. No one bothers you. You are with your mistress, so why should you tolerate interruptions?

No phones. No contact with the world. Don’t do Facebook. Don’t fart around on YouTube. Email is doom. Write where you have no Internet. Don’t walk the dog or call your mother, even if she pays you.

I do not recommend drugs or alcohol. Not a swell idea. What if, after a couple of belts, what you write is better? Then you’re stuck.

If it’s going badly, it might be enough to change your writing instrument. The way your brain connects to the page changes with each physical writing method. Pen, pencil, fountain pen, computer, typewriter, dictation ... I have written entire screenplays in pencil, and believe me, it affects how I think. Hemingway wrote in longhand, dialogue with a typewriter.

Understand, it doesn’t matter how you get the words on the page. Whatever works for you, is fine. Who cares if your method is weird, unorthodox, not the “right” way? The end result, a printout, is the same for everybody.

Be very very careful of self-censoring your work while you’re writing. It’s ruinous to hear a little voice saying, “this is terrible...” while you’re writing. You REALLY want that voice in your ear when you’re rewriting. But not now, not when you’re doing your damndest just to fill the page. And the page after that. If you write something and instantly hate it and erase it and feel worthless... hell, you’re never going to get anything done!

Just assume the first draft will be crud. Hey, it’s only the first draft! The tenth or twenty-third had better be pretty good, but do not sweat the first one! I beg you. Don’t worry so much. Remember, the first draft doesn’t have to be good. Just enough to cover the page.

Take a tip from Finding Forrester:

JAMAL
Women will sleep with you if you write a book?

FORRESTER
Women will sleep with you if you write a bad book.

So, sit down and do it. You can fix it if it’s bad. If you never write it, you can’t fix it. Then you have nothing but reams of blank paper and then what are you? A writer or a stationery salesman?