R. Garcia Vazquez

I'm thinking of two types of writer's block. One is simply having the desire or need to write with nothing to write about; all you can do is stare at a blank page (or screen). The second type is getting stuck in the middle of the writing process, like running a long distance and suddenly falling down. I find the former the easier of the two to manage.

If you understand that writing is really all about rewriting, you should have no hesitation in putting down on the page any word or phrase that pops into your head. The physical act of writing offers a gateway through writer's block. Write anything. Just keep typing or scripting anything that occurs to you, whether it makes sense or not. Look at where you are, pick an object (your coffee cup, a desk lamp), name it, give it life, make it move, give it a history, let it tell you its story. Give your brain a stimulus, a reason to unleash your imagination. The act of writing, even if all you're putting down is gibberish, will eventually--and it won't take long--filter out the nonsense and begin to produce meaning.

When I used to teach writing at a community college, I always encouraged my students to write without fear. Get something down, anything, and keep doing that until you produce something that can begin to be understood by someone else. Then go back and rewrite. The worst thing a writer can do when he or she experiences writer's block is to sit and stare at a blank page.

The second type of writer's block, getting stuck in the middle of the writing, for me, is the far more challenging type. Even so, I have attacked it in much the same way as the first. If I'm stuck, I begin to free associate, write whatever occurs to me about any of my characters and their circumstances. I may check old notes, things that occurred to me maybe even months earlier. If I come up with something I like, then I have to see if I can make it work within the context of the overall story. Sometimes that leads to interesting new twists. And even if I don't use that bit of writing, more often than not, it leads me to other possibilities. On occasion I have taken some elusive element that I liked too much to dismiss and locked myself in a quiet room or car for an hour or two just trying to visualize how this can work within the larger context of the novel.