How To Write When You Aren’t In The Mood (or Why I Don’t Believe in Writer’s Block)

You know that feeling when you just can’t be bothered? You stare at your laptop and you sigh.  You’re a third of the way into NaNoWriMo, several thousand words behind, and your novel is starting to feel like work. Your mind drifts off in search of new ideas or looking for some excuse not to write anything today. Don’t give in. Not now. Even Productive Procrastination will do you no favours during NaNoWriMo. Your goal is to generate a messy first draft and no form of procrastination is going to get the words on the page.

Be wary of calling this feeling ‘Writer’s Block’. Writer’s Block is not some magical affliction that strikes down promising young novelists. It's an excuse. It’s just easier to say ‘I have Writer's Block’ than it is to admit, even to yourself, that you don’t care enough about your writing to stay dedicated. And all fiction writers should be able to agree that the easy option is rarely the right one. You wouldn’t let your characters give up, would you? They persevere through the hard times – if they didn’t, you wouldn’t have much of a story to tell. So, if you won’t let them get away with it, why should you? You want to finish your story, don’t you? If so, the answer is simple, stop believing in the curse of Writer’s Block and accept that your disinterest in the story is probably something you can solve.

So what can you do?

There are a few tricks we can use to get ourselves out of these slumps.

Five Top Tips for NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is a worldwide event, in which writers attempt to write 50,000 words during November. It’s supposed to be a fun challenge but, for many writers, it turns into a nightmare.

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo four times and won three, so I’ve experienced my share of panicked overnight writing sessions as November draws to an end.  But, I’m hoping to avoid that stress this year, so here are five of the most important things I’ve learnt about keeping it fun:

Gathering Inspiration

We often think of inspiration as something that simply comes to us… there’s that image of the writer being struck by a ‘bolt of lightning’. But that isn’t how it works. At least, I’ve never been struck by this mysterious lightning bolt of ideas - and I think waiting for it is probably a waste of time.

How often have you sat in front of your computer, only to stare at a word document for a few minutes and then open facebook? Or taken up your notebook, only to sigh and put it down again because you don’t know what to write. You aren't feeling it. You aren’t motivated. You just want a cup of coffee and maybe a nap… You aren’t inspired and nothing gets done.

So, even if you want to keep faith in the lightning bolt, I encourage you to find your own inspiration in the meantime.

Minstrel Sophia of Apostrophe

Have you ever played The Sims Medieval? It's one of my favourite ways to procrastinate - The Kingdom of Apostrophe (I'm a writing geek, okay?) flourishes whenever I'm trying to put something off.

Anyway, one of the playable characters  is ‘the bard’ of the kingdom and, guess what? They don't let a lack of ideas stop them.

Playing as the bard, one of the tasks you have to complete is to spend a certain amount of time ‘gathering inspiration’. This is something that many of us forget to do in the real world.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we should stand around on the beach all day, holding a quill and looking pensively at a scroll... but I do think we ought to be actively gathering inspiration from the world around us.