One of the hardest steps in going from a dilettante writer to a serious writer, and then to a professional writer is learning to generate inspiration. The lightning bolt from the blue is all very well, but it isn't reliable, and if you want to make a career out of writing, you cannot sit around waiting for the lightning to find you. You have to get behind the mule in the morning, as the Tom Waits song says, and you have to do it whether you're inspired or not. When you're blocked, that means you have to go look at what's blocking you, see if you can crawl under it, or climb over it, or squeeze around it on the left, or hack a chunk out of it on the right. And if it throws you off, you have to jump right back in. You have to make the block explain itself to you, and then you have to take it apart and keep walking.
Writer's block can stop you from writing, but you cannot let it stop you from working. And that's the most important thing not to do with writer's block.
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Listening to: Smog - Running The Loping
via FoxyTunes
