Last night I started this blog entry with the hopes of discussing how to deal with the potential death of a beloved writing project. The reason was, sad to say, I was facing the possible demise of a project I’ve been working on for several months. It’s one of the best opportunities I’ve had as a writer. I was going to solicit your prayers that the project stay alive. But now, as of 1:30 today, it looks like the final (well, almost final) nail has been hammered into the coffin. The project is essentially dead.

I’ll need to have a little time now to mourn this death and, yes, question myself and/or God. (“Did I mishear you, Lord, when I began this project?”). Then, hopefully, I’ll get some wind back in my sails again.

So I guess I’m still asking for your prayers….only now the prayers are for me to move past this death—and for God to somehow redeem the time and effort I put into this project. I’m so reluctant to let go. I find myself wanting to pray it back to life.

If you’ve been where I am now, you know what it’s like.

This will be short. I’m leaving on a week-long trip in a few days and there are a million things to do before I go. (Including one more blog early next week).

As an editor, I’m used to seeing writers follow trends. After the Left Behind series came out, I saw writers who wanted to find that kind of success with their own version of the end times. Then when Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life sold more than 20 million copies, I saw various book proposals formatted to the “40-day” concept. Of course, most recently, Amish fiction has attracted a lot of attention as writers are doing their best to tap into that genre’s unexpected success. But what’s really interesting to me is that with upwards of ten million copies sold (I think that’s the present number) of The Shack I have yet to see anyone tell me their book is comparable to that novel. There may be one, but I don’t remember. I know some have suggested Jim Rubart’s book Rooms appeals to that readership, but that’s really about the only one. Anyone have any ideas as to why aspiring writers aren’t trying to aim for that gigantic readership in the same way they have other bestsellers? It’s a mystery to me.

By the way, I don’t have anything against finding a trend and trying to catch a wave (so to speak). I do it myself. I have several proposals for books that I try to tie in to existing interests in the reading public based on what’s already selling. My only reservation is that it seldom works (even for me). I’m happy to see the occasional successes when it does work.

It’s been a while since I blogged. I don’t like to go this long between entries, but life happens. Actually, the past few days I’ve been in a dither about what to blog about. I have a jim-dandy idea for a future entry, but it just doesn’t seem to be ripe enough to pick yet. Writers will understand that analogy.

Yesterday I asked my Facebook friends for ideas. LaRae suggested old movies, fiction, old music, my grandkids. That rather surprised me because I really doubt most of you would be interested in that sort of thing, other than my occasional brief outbursts on those topics on Facebook. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll give it a try. Other suggestions included what an editor does (maybe eventually), John Wooden, and e-books (no, Tami, no!)

Yvette Schneider, another Facebook friend, thought the answer was obvious. Since I was having a hard time knowing what to blog about, she suggested writer’s block. That certainly seems appropriate, so let’s take a brief look. First, let me say that those of you who are going to exit my blog now because writer’s block isn’t a problem for you are very blessed. Most authors, at some point in their writing lives, do suffer from writer’s block. I sure do—and I hate it. Sometimes it manifests itself as simple procrastination (“Gee, the lawn needs mowing, I’ll write later” or “Say, I wonder if the dentist can get me in for that root canal today”). Sometimes it’s pure laziness. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it might be ADD. But whatever the reason, the main thing to consider is that life for a writer is way too short to waste time on writer’s block. At present I have more than fifty potential writing projects on my writing “bucket list.” Certainly not all will see the light of day before I die, but one thing is sure: the more time I allow writer’s block to paralyze me, the fewer of these stellar life-changing potential Pulitzer Prize winners will find their way into print.

Clearly, every writer who experiences writer’s block must devise a strategy to overcome it. You really must. We really must. The several times I’ve made myself sit down, shut up, stop doubting myself, and tap the keys on my keyboard, I’ve come up with some very nice material. It’s getting started that’s a killer when one is suffering from writer’s block. Many writers get past their block by simply staying seated at their keyboard no matter what. As I was channel surfing this past weekend, Book TV was interviewing the author of the biography of children’s author, Dr. Seuss. I can only paraphrase what I heard, but it was something to the effect that Ted Geisel (Dr. Suess’s real name) sat in his chair writing for eight hours a day, block or no block. Or as one quote from Ron Carlson observes: “The secret is not leaving the room.”

I won’t tell you how to devise your particular strategy to overcome writer’s block. I’m sure it’s very much an individual matter. What works for me may or may not work for you. But I will share what has worked for others—and for me—in hopes that something here may help you on your way back to productivity. So here’s some advice from some of the masters of the craft:

* “When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I’m writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.” Isaac Asimov

* “When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears—I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer’s block.” Irving Stone [Nick adds: I do not pull weeds, but I find a nice long walk or even a drive will sometimes do the same for me]

* “I think writer’s block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.” Roy Blount, Jr.

* “I believe that the so-called ‘writing block’ is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance … one should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing. It’s easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing … I can imagine a person beginning to feel he’s not able to write up to that standard he imagines the world has set for him. But to me that’s surrealistic. The only standard I can rationally have is the standard I’m meeting right now … You should be more willing to forgive yourself. It doesn’t make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you’ve done it.” William Stafford

For me, in addition to walking or driving, sometimes reading a writer I love helps. After all, as writer Hart Crane observed, “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment.” Sometimes by reading the words of others, our own internal word processer is given a jumpstart. On some occasions, I’ll even attempt to overcome writer’s block by opening up a favorite novel and typing a few paragraphs verbatim. That seems to get me in the flow of writing—and that, it seems to me, is the basic problem with writer’s block: it’s a stoppage of the flow.

Now it’s your turn. Do you have bouts of writer’s block? How do you deal with it? Can you recount a time when you made yourself break through only to be astonished at how good the results were?