“WRITER’S CLOG” AND HOW I DEAL WITH IT.

“WRITER’S CLOG” AND HOW I DEAL WITH IT.

Writer’s block is where a writer has difficulty coming up with original ideas for a book.  Stephen King’s book called Bag of Bones that touches on this.  It’s a common problem in the literary world.  I have the opposite of writer’s block which I have named, “Writer’s Clog.”  Writer’s Clog is where you have a swarm of ideas hitting you all at once and you have difficulty managing all this information all at once.  This is how it began.

Since I have been a practicing attorney, I was interested in writing a legal thriller; I am a huge fan of John Grisham and had read a lot of his books, so a legal thriller was the genre for me.  I had a great idea in mind and set out to put it on paper.  While I believe that a lot of writers plan out a book from beginning to the end, my method has been to just have a general idea of the characters and the storyline and then just write.

As I began to write, I found myself struggling to put ideas into words.  After hours of wrestling with all of the different possible directions this could go and how the story and characters kept changing, I had written nothing.  For a while I thought I was struggling with writer’s block, the inability to come up with an idea or plan and put it on paper.  Then I realized that I had “Writer’s Clog.”  It was like my mind was a twenty-lane freeway that slowly bottlenecks into one lane.  I could not write the ideas quick enough to get them all on paper. 

Here’s an example:  As I would begin writing one book, the scene from later in the story or even in another story idea jump into my head.  I would struggle to remove it from my brain in order to focus on the current scene I was writing. The problem got to the point where I had started four or five books that were waiting for an ending. 

I have a friend that asked me how my book is coming.  I explained the whole “Writer’s Clog” problem to him.  He thought for a moment and said, “Write in vignettes.”  At first, I blew him off as he was not a writer, but when I thought about it, I realized that he was correct.  It was important to capture great ideas, new storylines, new and interesting aspects to add to a character, and new scenes to add to a story.  However, you can’t let yourself get buried in ideas to the point that you can’t make any progress in your novel.  There needs to be a middle ground where you can capture the new ideas and still move forward in your current project.

So, when an idea hits me, I log it.  If it is an idea for a new story, I have a file for new stories and I add it to the list of new story lines; I also include all the details of the story that come to me.  If it is a new character, I add it to a list of new characters that I have.  If it is a new character in a story I am already writing, then I add to the notes that I keep at the end of the story.  If it is a new scene or dialogue to a story I am writing, I write it down in the notes I keep at the end of that story.  Lastly, sometimes a picture a riveting conversation between two characters and I end up writing the entire scene, the vignette, and place it in the story; whether the vignette is further down the story line of what I am working on, or part of another story I started, I write the scene and place and place it in its book.  This takes a few minutes, but it helps me clear my mind and move forward with the story at hand.  Once it is on paper it was out of my head and I can refocus on the story in front of me.  This little trick has helped me get my focus back on track.

TF’s NOTES:  The result of writing in vignettes is that I have a collection of scenes from several books.  As I continued to work on these books I ended up working on several books.  So far I have several good starts to several books, placing me closer to finishing several novels in the future.  Finishing a novel isn't always a straight line. Sometimes progress means collecting enough pieces that eventually the story assembles itself.

Lastly, I’ve come to learn that putting on smooth jazz in the background and just sitting down in front of the computer is the answer to everything.  I eventually get into the writing zone and get back to the storyline.