“I’m just not ready to write.”
It’s an excuse for not working that nearly every writer has used as some point or another. Does that really mean they suffer from writer’s block? Not necessarily. To borrow a quote from athletics, success is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. It’s what keeps deoderant companies in business.
Lack of inspiration is also what, by and large, keeps people investing in Orlando vacations to get away from their daily grind and clear their minds in hopes that inspiration will come. But really, most so-called writer’s block comes not from a lack of good ideas, but from a lack of preparation.
Take this 5-8 page paper I have to turn in for a class I’m taking. I am closing in on a week overdue on the paper, and yet I still have yet to write one word. It’s not that I have no idea what I want to say; but I’m still finishing the reading, and until I do that, I don’t know for sure where I want to go with my conclusions, my arguments, my supporting materials and quotes.
Fiction writing isn’t much different, when you think about it. You need to know your characters. You need to know the story you want to tell, from beginning to end. Just as I will be completely ready to write once I finish my reading and know all that I’m supposed to know, so will fiction writers find the task of writing sharp, effective prose much easier when they know all they need to know to tell the story.
Read just about any John Irving novel for an example of the power knowing your whole story ahead of time can lend you as a storyteller. Read this opening sentence from “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” and ask yourself if John Irving ever could have crafted this book without knowing the whole story he was going to tell:
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
So, my advice is this: if you can’t write, it’s time to do your research. Once you know all about your characters and your story, you’ll be surprised how easily the words start to flow.
