Ask the Author: Summer Brennan
Answered Questions (3)
Summer Brennan
Hi there! I'm sorry I didn't see the question earlier. The best way to contact me with queries for interviews and such is through my website, https://www.summer-brennan.com/.
Summer Brennan
I get writer's block quite severely. No matter how much I may tell myself that writer's block is all in my head, it still insists on doing a marvelously lifelike impression of reality. For me it isn't usually a case of not having any ideas, but more that I can't seem to make those ideas show up properly on the screen in readable English sentences. Here are some things that help.
1) Take a walk. Get away from your computer or notebook and think for a while while moving your feet up and down in a way that propels you forward. You're still working, so don't let anyone disturb you. Sometimes you just need to clear the cobwebs.
2) Talk instead of write. I use the Voice Notes app on my phone to record long rambling messages to myself about whatever I'm working on. I can walk down the street doing this and people just think that I'm having a conversation with someone on the other end of the phone. It feels crazy at first but then you get used to it. Try to tell the story in however jumbled way that you can, just to get the elements out there. Then, after a few days or weeks or whatever you want, listen to your messages and transcribe them work for word. Congratulations, you now have a very, very bad first draft of something.
3) Make yourself write. Use a timer and vow to get out 1,000 words in an hour, or even 30 minutes. Make it tight enough that you won't have time to think too much. Just put down sentences one after the other, and then edit later. Only rarely will the writing you get from this be as bad as you'd expect.
These are my three main approaches, but there are more! I should hang a list of them framed on my wall.
1) Take a walk. Get away from your computer or notebook and think for a while while moving your feet up and down in a way that propels you forward. You're still working, so don't let anyone disturb you. Sometimes you just need to clear the cobwebs.
2) Talk instead of write. I use the Voice Notes app on my phone to record long rambling messages to myself about whatever I'm working on. I can walk down the street doing this and people just think that I'm having a conversation with someone on the other end of the phone. It feels crazy at first but then you get used to it. Try to tell the story in however jumbled way that you can, just to get the elements out there. Then, after a few days or weeks or whatever you want, listen to your messages and transcribe them work for word. Congratulations, you now have a very, very bad first draft of something.
3) Make yourself write. Use a timer and vow to get out 1,000 words in an hour, or even 30 minutes. Make it tight enough that you won't have time to think too much. Just put down sentences one after the other, and then edit later. Only rarely will the writing you get from this be as bad as you'd expect.
These are my three main approaches, but there are more! I should hang a list of them framed on my wall.
Summer Brennan
The obvious thing would be to write, of course. But more important than that, I think, is reading. Read as much as you possibly can. Read more than you think you need to. Read authors with different styles, different sentence habits, different cadences. It's like learning to dance as a little kid by standing on your mom or dad's shoes. The more you read, the more the instinct of language will imprint itself upon you, so that when you do go to write, a kind of muscle memory will be there. Then write something, and don't worry too much if it's good. Just finish it. Whatever it is, write it through from beginning to middle to end. Writers need to be able to tell whole stories as much if not more than string together pretty words.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more