Do It Anyway: A mantra to beat Writers' Block

Writers' Block is a familiar, formidable enemy to most writers. The paralysing fear that takes hold when we sit down to craft a scene or poem, the unavoidable question that hovers about as we type or scratch away at a notebook: "What if it's no good?"

Let's look at that. "What if it's no good?" Imagine yourself sitting at your keyboard or desk with your paper and writing the absolute worst drek the world has ever seen. So what? No one has to see it. No one besides you has to ever lay eyes upon it.

Crap drawing of a trashcan for your crap writing

During NaNoWriMo, I find it very freeing to declare before the marathon starts, "I am allowed to write the absolute worst drek the world has ever seen. Whatever I write is my own and I may do with it as I please. If I finish and decide on the first of December to shred the entire 50,000 word manuscript, that's my business. My friends and family do not have to see this. There is no shame in writing, no matter its quality."

Or words to that effect. The point is, as Lawrence Block points out in "Telling Lies for Fun & Profit", to "do it anyway". He makes reference to the plight of long-distance runners who hit a bad patch, where 'everything hurts and the whole process seems unendurable and the runner wants nothing so much as to drop out of the race." Books, he says, have bad patches too. "The important thing is to get through them, to get the words down however ill-chosen they may seem."

And you may find, once you've gotten started, that it's not so bad after all. That the words start to flow and, after perhaps a shaky start, they sort themselves out and things go along quite swimmingly. If they don't, well, there's always the shredder. But even if you decide to euthanise your work after you've written it, keep in mind: you've written. And there's no shame in that.