Hello friends!

So despite my claim that as I begin to focus more on my W.I.P (work in progress), the blogging will go down, I still haven’t actually been able to follow through with it! Maybe it’s because I’ve been finally getting some good writing done, so that I feel like I can blog at the same time without cutting into my own writing time. It’s a win-win situation!

After thinking a lot about the way I write, I posted a little tip on my Facebook page. This just got me thinking on a whole host of other tips I wanted to share about some of the things I find help me get into the right frame of mind and get over that dreaded writer’s block.

Just like with everything on this blog, all these tips and tricks are just my opinion. I’m not an expert on anything, least of all writing, so just know that these are things that work for me. They might or might not work for you.

Ok, are we good? All right, let’s get started!

Where you write…

If you’re feeling blocked for a long period of time, try changing where you write. Sometimes where you’re writing is distracting you, or just doesn’t help you get into the right mood to write in.

For example, I used to write in my room, but now, for some reason, it’s the most distracting place of all. I’d sit down to write, and then hours would go by and I’d realise that I had spent the time going through Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, without getting anything done.

When I (forcefully) moved my writing location out of the comfort of my bedroom, where all sorts of distractions were only a hand span away, I finally began to focus.

Think about the kind of atmosphere that helps you be the most productive. It might sound silly, but this makes a big difference.

How much you write…

This is the tip I shared on Facebook. Sometimes it’s easy to beat yourself up about not getting a large word count. And while the word count is an important part of writing a novel (or whatever project it may be), don’t let it be the only thing you measure yourself with. It sounds kind of obvious, but quality usually does supersede quantity.

A good writing session shouldn’t just be about how many words you can hammer out by the end of it. Sometimes, getting through a difficult scene or a scene you’ve been stuck on for a long time can be an achievement.

Last Friday, when I looked down at the word count of the chapter I had written, it was barely past the 1500 mark and that’s all I had written over the three hours I had been working on that scene. Despite my low word count, I still had a warm feeling spreading through my stomach that made me happy about that writing session. Why? Because I had finally written a crucial scene that I had been stuck on over the past few months, a scene that had prevented me from writing the rest of the story. And this was a great achievement.

Taking a break…

If you’re like me, you hate taking breaks. You’d rather sit there, staring at the screen with glassy eyes, than get up of your butt and do something else. But sometimes that break helps. In fact, more often than not, that little break can help your idea/dialogue juices kick start again, so that you can get back to cranking out that story or idea.

For me, I do my best writing when I’m not writing. Okay, scratch that, I get my best ideas when I’m not writing. It’s so easy to sit there, staring at that dreaded blank page, willing your brain to form the words, that it’s better to get up and remove yourself from the situation. And because I’m a constant daydreamer, I end up narrating dialogue between my characters (does anyone else do this?!), or turning phrases over in my head to see how they sound.

I’ve found that doing mindless tasks, like saying washing the dishes, doing laundry, or vacuuming, helps the most, since, even though your hands are busy doing chores and stuff you probably have to do at some point in the day, your brain is left to wander and cook up all sorts of delicious scenarios and sequences of dialogue. This is why I keep my notebook handy, so that I don’t lose those awesome trains of thoughts, and scribble them down quickly. Of course, this becomes increasingly difficult to do in the middle of washing dishes…

Making it pretty…

Now, this is something that applies to everyone who writes, not just those who are writing books. Even when I was writing essays in university, I’d get so obsessed and stuck with a particular wording of a sentence, that I would just sit there, trying to get it on the page EXACTLY how I heard it in my head. Sometimes, you can do this. Oftentimes, you can’t and instead end up wasting precious time.

Sometimes, just writing it down in plain old English, without any pretty metaphors or words or alliteration, is just the easiest thing to do. Write down the idea as simply as you can, and then go back and play with the wording of it later.

Not only will this help you save time, but it’ll prevent you from losing that train of thought. I can’t count how many times this has happened to me!

Don’t let people bring you down!

Obviously, this applies to everything, not just writing. But for some strange reason, just because you declare yourself as a writer, people feel the need to put you down about your dream/profession.

Some people write for fun, while others write seriously, with the hope of publishing their manuscript one day. Yes, it is a difficult dream, but it doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable than the dream someone else is pursuing.

For example, some people like to tell me that writing is a hobby, and ask me when I’ll do something ‘real’ with my life (just because the people I write about aren’t real, doesn’t mean my words aren’t!).

Some people tell me that they wish they had that much time on their hands, to spend it writing a book. It just frustrates me when people say stuff like this to writers, since it seems to indicate that writing a book is just a trifling pastime, something unimportant, and something that people with A LOT of free time get to do, since it isn’t as typical as a 9 to 5 job.

I know of so many writers and authors who balance their families, other jobs, and life commitments, while also writing a book. It isn’t something that people with a lot of free time accomplish, but something that people with a lot of self-discipline and focus get to accomplish. And it is hard.

Just because I get to do my job in the comfort of my own home, without even changing out of my pyjamas, does not make it any less valid than, say, being a teacher or a doctor.

So don’t let anyone make you feel like writing a book isn’t as valuable as a ‘real’ job or that your dream of being an author is pointless. There’s a reason why you put in all those hours rewriting and pulling out your hair in frustration, and it isn’t those other people. It’s you.

Truthfully, I could go on about this topic (and frankly the last point deserves an essay on it’s own), but I’ll stop here. Again, I don’t have any sort of expertise on the art of writing, but am just sharing some of the tips/tricks that I’ve found helpful over my years of writing manuscript.

I hope you found this useful, and if I have any other tips/tricks (or, let’s be honest, rants), I’ll be sure to post about them again soon! Let me know if you have any other helpful tricks in the comments 🙂

Thanks for reading,

Ikhlas

P.S- the picture is of a poster I received from my best friends upon graduating last year. Just in case you’re curious, the blacked out words say ‘drink wine’, which I obviously don’t advocate, but I agree with everything else there, so I’d thought I’d share it. 🙂