Overcoming Writer's Block

So you've been religiously working on your newest story. You tell yourself that this time you will finish what you start. But things start to slow down, you write 5 words, then delete the sad excuse for a dialogue and then proceed to stare at the keyboard for an hour before calling it a night. You get up the next day and are once again faced with lack of ideas. Your characters are stuck crying to you to keep going but there are no bridges in sight. You've hit Writers Block (dun, dun, dun...)

Sound familiar? It happens to the best of us, and I certainly don't put myself in that category because I have many unfinished stories myself... but I hear the J.K. Rowling and Stephen King's of the world also suffer from this terrible affliction. I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers (even if I did promise you a blog post on overcoming writer's block). I fully intend to follow through with that promise however,  so here we go. I have a couple of  things I do to get back on track.

First, take a break. 
Similar to my advice for getting over a reading slump, sometimes all you need is some space and fresh air. Go do something else for a while, get some sunshine if you can. Put your writer's brain on autopilot and you might find that by the time you are ready to return to the keyboard you know exactly what should happen next.

Keep going.
Sometimes you just have to treat it like a job and put words on pages. To roughly quote author Jerry Jenkins "In no other profession would you get away with saying you have worker's block". Maybe you don't really plan to write for a living, but if you're trying to write a book (the ultimate goal of all writers) you have to add a little 'whatever it takes' attitude sometimes. Writing's hard, but you already know that. Make your characters do something, or have something happen to them. Even if it's really bad, keep it and keep going. When you're done you can go back and rewrite. This will help you get back on track.

Work on another part.
Resist the urge to write chapter 5 before chapter 7, go write that scene you've been wanting to get to, or your ending. It'll get the creative juices flowing again and you can come back to the scene that you've been stuck on knowing exactly what needs to happen next.

Rewrite.
Do some editing on stuff you've already written or rewrite a scene you've been rethinking. Polish what you already have and you'll likely get ideas of how to continue.

Work on your story.
Invest in a writer's notebook (though you probably already have one), I prefer paper and pen for planning stuff but if your story is on a document you can make a separate one. Write down things you want to include in your story, character backstories, conversations that need to happen, possible plot twists, character descriptions, themes, etc. Even if you're stuck writing your story you can still work on it.

The moral is that there's no shortcut to writing stories. You have to buckle down.

Write for someone you know.
My writer's block tends to be a huge hunk of insecurity rather than an inability to keep going because I don't know how. At some point I reach the dreaded middle of my story and thoughts like 'This sucks' and 'No one will want to read this' creep in. I've found it helpful to envision who you're writing this for. (I think we often imagine a huge faceless audience ready to pounce on our work and find something to criticize). I showed the first chapter of the story I'm currently writing to my younger brother (as it's middle grade target), and he often asks about it and if he could keep reading because he really liked it so far. This has helped me because I can write based on what I think will amuse, surprise, or excite him (he's my reader demographic representative as it were). And it also helps to know that when I'm finished and have polished my work and its not "good enough to publish" (Keep in mind even Harry Potter was rejected 18 times, so there's hope for all of us) I will still have someone who wants to read it and that will make it all worth it. So find someone you know who reads the genre you're writing in or fits the age group its targeted at. Write for them and not an editor, or publisher, or thousands of nameless readers.

Just keep writing, you got this!