Whaaaaaaaaa? Say that again? -
I said “blocking the writer’s block blocker!” In other words–
STOP FREAKING WRITING.
That’s right. Stop writing. Right now. Turn off that word processor and step away from the ‘puter. Let the ‘puter play on its own. Or if you have a laptop, let it be just a ‘top’–forego the ‘lap’. As a matter of fact, your lap is now laced with acid that can burn through anything. You don’t want to lose your big investment Macbook, so keep it away from your lap. Stop writing.
What the hell am I talking about? It’s actually kind of funny. Polly Frost of “The Atlantic” wrote one of the funniest posts I’ve ever read regarding the ‘opposite of writer’s block’. That’s right. Yes, indeedy–there is an ‘opposite’. Do you hear me screaming? Like a little girl? When I thought I was a warrior, defending the ranks against the hose beast called Writer’s Block, there is indeed another nasty critter. It’s Writer’s Block’s Bitch–and the “bitch” has many names.
Blogaholism (I unfortunately suffer from this, I think)
Twitteritis (This is like a common cold for me)
Reviewing Addiction
RSS Dependency
Status Update Disorder
Please review the article by Frost for a better understanding of what these names actually mean. Some of you may already know (I’m leeeaaaaaaaning toward you, Elana…. And you, Heather Dyer 
).
It is seriously a valid point, even though Frost pokes fun at it with her dazzling article. We often, as writers, distract ourselves from that all-too-common task of working on our projects by sitting around, twittering, blogging about nothing and everything, Facebooking and reading other blogs and playing online games and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
But here’s the thing….
Reading blogs like the Mindless Musings and Trying to Do the Write Thing makes it plain to the simple, stone-carved fact (like a Ten Commandment tablet) that these writers who blog simply…well…LOVE WRITING. Look at some of their posts, people, come on! They live for it.
Networking on Twitter also serves a purpose of advertising your name, advertising your book, increasing readership of a blog that’ll spread the word of any projects you might have. Even better, it’s common knowledge that writers working with other writers ultimately benefits writing (literally, Sarah, I’m about 20 pages shy of finishing LEGENDS. I’m so freakin’ close! That means either you E.J. or you H.L. need to C. ME with your book A.S.A.P. so I can review it for U on the blog).
It’s not all fun and games, though, to make fun of the Writer’s Block Bitch. Let’s break it down, though, real quick. Depending on how fast you as a writer can pull in maybe 5 pages a day, really you’d only use, I’d say, about possibly two hours in a day dedicated to your WIP. That leaves about 18 more hours of actual real time to do other things. If we were normal people, the amount of time we’d have left in a day would be 14 hours (8 would be dedicated to sleeping, which doesn’t exist in our world). And, really, 5 pages a day is pretty solid if you ask me. Your standard 75,000-word novel would probably get finished in less than two months at that rate. S-O-L-I-D.
And with all that extra time, activities like blogging, twittering, Facebooking, Myspace-ing, gaming, chatting, eating chips and chocolate while watching streaming TV actually benefits a writer in so many ways! All that stuff is like fuel, right?
Here’s the thing, though: it’s when you don’t have the full 18 hours of extra time where all the ‘activities’ can slow you down.
I’m guilty of that. You know my life. You know my schedule. Or at least some of you do. I’m pretty much a workhorse. For me, the extra time I have left after devoting some time to writing is about 18 MINUTES. Then I crash.
Sometimes that baffles me to no end when I think of H.L. Dyer and what she does for a living–and yet she has all these blogs (getting dizzy), some of them (or all of them) with the same name (I think), different posts, different formats. All over. Like rabbits multiplying! Or those Tribbles from the old Star Trek series wth Captain Kirk! She writes and writes and writes her blog as if actual words keep oozing out of her fingertips–if she stopped, she’d get the carpet dirty, the desk dirty, the bathroom dirty, her husband dirty with those demonic letters and words. It’s like she has this urge to blog. AND…AND…. She’s written her book THE EDGE OF MEMORY and currently seeks representation for it. Remarkable.
Many, many, many, many other authors–heck, even literary agents are guilty of this (Nathan Bransford!)–really pour themselves out not only to the WIP’s they have but those fun blogs they like to develop and update. It’s natural. It’s normal. So don’t be afraid of it. Work the routine you normally work. But remember–if you don’t have the time in your life because of work or kids or traveling or maybe your fingers got chewed off by a giant mutant paper shredder, you’ll notice that working on your WIP tends to move a little slow. That’s okay, too. You’ll get it.
I know I will. It just takes time.
