Announcing the Ultimate Cure for Writer's Block

There are many writers who believe that writer's block doesn't exist, and I'm definitely one of them.

Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones who has never struggled to put words onto paper—in fact, I'm one of those "flurry" people, who has too many ideas and not enough places to put them.

On the other end of the spectrum are those writers who for whatever reason, sit down to write, and the words won't... come... out.

It's hard to believe in something that you've never experienced before, therefore writer's block could very well exist. We all experience internal struggles with our creativity, and I believe the term "writer's block" has become a broad term that encompasses the various struggles we all face as we build our careers.

So, instead of arguing whether writer's block exists or not, and instead of shaking a finger at writers who say they experience it, lecturing them about "discipline" and "excuses" (like it's just that easy), why don't we, as writers who don't experience it, offer our words of wisdom to help struggling writers come over to our side of the fence?

Here is my ultimate cure for writer's block:
Write as if no one is going to read it... and at the same time, write as if everyone is going to read it.

Huh? Let me explain:

Remember when you first started writing? In my case, I was six or seven years old. We owned a trailer at the KOA, a campground in Gravenhurst, and the tipout was my little writing sanctuary. I would fold a stack of paper in half and staple it, creating my "book" (my first stab at self-publishing), and I would write. And write. And write. Although nobody would ever see these little monstrosities, I wrote my books as if I was a bestselling author who was touring the world doing book signings (blame Joan Wilder of Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile).

When you first started writing, you wrote because of the sheer enjoyment of it, regardless of the outcome.

As you gained momentum and experience, you began to understand the importance of creating your own unique voice, and writing for a specific audience.

When you made the decision to become a full-time writer, you felt the same exhiliration you did when you were younger.

Then, as you started pushing forward to begin building your career, you became overwhelmed by all of the "rules".

The fact is, a writing career does come with rules, and you need to have discipline, you need to work hard, and you need to stay consistent (and persistent). That's where the internal struggle begins: when you feel as if your creativity needs to fit into a neat little package, you seize up and the result is an empty page and wavering self-esteem. You stop being yourself, and in turn you stop being a writer.

You need to build a bridge between why you love writing, and the rules of the industry, just like when you needed to compromise with your spouse about what way the toilet paper roll should go.

The important thing is to always stay passionate, and always love writing (Write like no one is going to read it...), then, when you're revising your writing project and editing it for submission, keep in mind the rules, and keep in mind your audience (and at the same time, write as if everyone is going to read it).

The only way to cure your writer's block, is to write. The only way to write, is to cure your writer's block, which means going back to the basics: go back to your core set of values, find your voice, and love the process.

I know, deep.

Feel free to share your words of wisdom below.

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Writing News: February 2012 Edition

Forbes Among 30 Clients Using Computer-Generated Stories Instead of Writers
Forbes has joined a group of 30 clients using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories.
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Friends Launch Mary Oliver Tribute Blog
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver is seriously ill. To help the poet through this difficult time, Julie L. Moore and Julie Brooks Barbour and have started a blog where friends readers and poets can share “how they have been influenced or changed by her work.”
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LinkedIn Counts Nearly 336,000 Bloggers
There are 335,924 people on LinkedIn who list “blogging” as one of their skills. That figure rose 27 percent over the last year.
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How Writers Can Stay Optimistic
How do you stay positive despite all the rejection and frustrations of the writing life? Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Amy Spencer, author of Bright Side Up: 100 Ways to Be Happier Right Now. She shared advice for all the struggling writers in the audience, explaining how we can persevere in the face of rejection.
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On Getting Paid: Literary Magazines and Remuneration
David Lynn began his Editor’s Notes for the Autumn 2004 issue of The Kenyon Review with some necessary questions: “How much is a fine story worth? What monetary value does a superb poem possess? How much — and this is the inexorable point — should authors be paid for their long, solitary work?”
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HarperCollins Is Said to Pay Nearly $4 Million for Amanda Knox Memoir
Four months after being freed from an Italian prison and cleared of charges that she murdered her roommate, Amanda Knox has sold her memoir to HarperCollins, the publishing house announced Thursday. She will receive close to $4 million, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
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Amazon Publishing Bookshop Boycott Grows
Independent booksellers join Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Canadian chain Indigo in refusing to stock retail giant's own books.
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Like that Chrysler Super Bowl ad with Clint Eastwood? Thank a Poet.
Of the three people credited as copywriters on the powerful Chrysler advertisement, the one featuring Clint Eastwood that aired for the first time during Sunday's Super Bowl, one is poet Matthew Dickman.
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How To Save Your Letters Online
Wish you could save your handwritten notes or letters in a digital format? Try using the Evernote app to preserve digital copies of your handwritten material.
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Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell
Here’s one way to become a better writer. Listen to the advice of writers who earn their daily bread with their pens.
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Never Give Up on Your Writing with Emerald Barnes

This is a guest post from writer Emerald Barnes. Enjoy!

Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Have you ever been here before? I have. There have been times when I just wanted to give up on writing. I felt like my career was going nowhere, my writing was horrible, and that I’d never make it in the writing industry.

A fellow author told me one day when I felt like tossing in the rag, “Getting published is hard. Not writing is even harder.” His words, along with Maya Angelou's, resonated within me like words in a cave echoing off the walls. They were right. Not writing was worse than I ever imagined anything ever being.

These stories pressed their way into existence one way or another. I was dreaming about them, longing to write one or two sentences of their plotline down. They coursed through every waking thought I had. You have to write me, they said, even if it’s only for yourself. Okay. We all know I’m exaggerating that last point just a little. And only just a little. I had to write these stories. Even if I was going to be the only person to read them, they were going to be told.

Everyone kept telling me not to give up. Why would I? I had a pretty good thing going. I had self-published my novella, Piercing Through the Darkness, and I had two more novels in the editing stages. I was looking for a publisher for one of them (still am, actually). I had other stories and novels that were written or on the verge of being written. I had ideas. Ideas that I was bringing to paper, but ideas that weren’t going anywhere at that point and time.

I was scared. There’s no denying it. I was terrified at the prospect of my unknown future, but aren’t we all? I had to learn how to suck it up and move forward with my life, so that’s what I did. I hurried along with the edits of my novel I hope to have finished once and for all by the end of this month. Self-publishing is still an option, but I’m searching for different options as well. I’m writing more stories and novels, and I’m moving on.

Maya Angelou was right. There is no greater agony than bearing these stories I wanted to share with others but wasn’t writing. Fear of the future was pushed to the back of my mind when I thought about how torturous it was going to be not doing something I loved.

I may not be famous or rich, but I know this: I am a writer. There’s no denying it. I weave tales into words on paper for others to enjoy. I paint a picture of a world previously unknown and bring it to fruition. I can’t deny who I am because I’m afraid.

Sure, this is a terrifying profession. People will hate you, and people will love you, readers, agents and publishers alike. There will be people you run across who will befriend you; others will push you aside. You have to develop a thick skin. It was something I wasn’t used to. People’s comments always hurt me to the core, but now, I have to learn to accept the fact that some people aren’t going to like my writing.

Don’t give up on writing. Don't even think about it. If there is nothing more agonizing than the thought of not writing, then by all means write. If it’s not for anyone but yourself, write. This is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned.

About Emerald Barnes
Emerald Barnes graduated with a bachelor's degree from Mississippi University for Women in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing. She resides in a small town in Mississippi, where she writes novels and short stories as well as blogs about writing when she isn't spending time with her nieces and nephew. She has self-published an e-book, Piercing Through the Darkness, and has been published by Phyllis Scott Publishing in their book Blue Legs and Other Coming of Age Stories. She is working diligently to finish more works for publication.

You can keep in touch with Emerald by visiting her blog, joining her facebook page, or following her on twitter.

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How to Use Anger to Fuel Your Writing (In a Positive Way)

As with every emotion we own, we can either harness our anger and use it to enhance our writing, or we can let it consume us and tarnish what we want to accomplish.

When we're angry, we have the sudden urge to create the ultimate hissy fit: we want to hit something, throw something, scream, or in my case rant and rave and swear like a sailor.

We see characters on shows and in movies lose it and trash an entire room of their home, and it's exhilirating to watch, isn't it? Wouldn't it feel great to do the same?

While I used to think so, I now think of all the time that would be wasted having to clean up the mess afterward—both literally and figuratively—having to replace an entire room's worth of items that probably took years to accumulate, and having to piece ourselves back together in the process. Sounds counterproductive to me!

The same goes for our writing: we can either write down a bunch of garbage when we're angry that once we've calmed will be unusable (and possibly even illegible), or we can channel our anger, and use it as fuel for our bigger career picture.

When you're angry at someone...
Every story we work on, whether via writing a memoir, novel, short story, or screenplay, needs conflict. What better place to find realistic conflict that readers can connect to than from our own lives? By using a fight we've just had, or a betrayal we've just experienced, and writing out both our side of what happened and the side of the person we're angry with, not only will we create vivid depictions for our writing project, we'll also be able to delve deeper into the other person's intentions, and find closure for the relationship we need to mend (or let go of).

When you're angry about your work...
For those of us working at a less-than-appealing job to pay our bills while we transition into our dream writing career, instead of getting upset about something, I force anger into every situation that is derailing me from my writing goals. I've always found anger to be one of my most constructive emotions to propel me forward, and away from the situations I want no part of.

Case-in-point: when I first launched this blog back in December 2010, I used a basic stock template and focused on building my content and connecting with other writers. Then, in March of 2011, I experienced a very infuriating scenario in my web design job, and it was a scenario that I had been in way too many times before. Instead of getting upset and throwing in the towel, I got angry. I stomped around, I swore, I bitched to my boyfriend (his ears were probably pulsating by the time I was done), and I went straight back into my office and spent the entire night redesigning and launching the blog you now read today.

While we know that our current jobs are simply stepping stones, we don't want to end up becoming one of those people whose stepping stone becomes their permanent lifestyle. I knew this blog was my future, so I used my anger to propel it and what I want it to become to the next level (and you can too!).

When you're angry about your life...
So many of us have been in positions where our lives don't add up to who we are or what we believe in. We end up so derailed that we barely recognize who we are anymore. In these instances, you can use your anger to dig yourself out of whatever hole you're in, because it's your anger that will propel you forward to the life you want. If there are things that are happening in your life that you can't stand, your anger will be the force that pulls you through. All you have to do when your next bout with anger hits is swear to yourself, "I'm not going to live like this anymore," and fight the good fight! It's a lot easier said than done, but I've done it, and so can you.

When you're angry at yourself...
We all make mistakes, and we all have traits that hold us back to the point where we frustrate ourselves (and in my opinion, because we're creative, these hang-ups become amplified, since it's part of who we are to observe things in greater detail). The best thing we can do is try our hardest to overcome our shortcomings, not just to improve our own lives, but to improve the lives of others.

In my case, I have many quirks that I'm annoyed by, and issues with my general surroundings I want to change, so I've been using the improvements I want to make to my life as material for freelance articles. It's a great way to find new angles on old ideas, and grow your writing resume in the process.

Anger should not be left to fester within yourself, nor should it be used in a destructive way. The best part about being a writer is that doing so gives us the opportunity to reflect on things that have happened in a constructive way, and bring color to every project we decide to work on.

Every story needs conflict, and what better place to construct conflict
than from our own anger?

How do you use your anger to your creative advantage?

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Review: Smashwords Style Guide (Not As Scary As It Seems)

Writers constantly have the importance of creating multiple income streams shoved down their throats, and why? Because it is important! (Yes, I'm on the bandwagon, and always will be.)

Now, one of the most important income streams is creating e-books as a way to carve your niche and become an expert in your chosen area of the industry. Because many of us struggle to create time to write as it is, the concept of adding a pile of new work to our plate, including (gasp!) e-book formatting and marketing, can feel very overwhelming.

Smashwords makes the process a little easier by giving writers the ability to upload e-books they create in Microsoft Word to the Smashwords server, which will convert the file into the various formats necessary to be read on multiple e-readers.

If you want your e-book to be accepted into their Premium Catalogue, which gives you the opportunity to have your e-book distributed through their various distribution channels (including Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble to name a few), it is recommended you read the Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Coker to ensure your acceptance into the program.

At first glance, the Guide seems like an overwhelming read (on my iPad, it was 136 pages in length), but I'm here to tell you it's not as scary as it seems. The Guide shares how to format your Microsoft Word file, in order to publish your e-book at maximum quality.

Yes, there is a lot of detail involved, but the guide is easy to follow, and divided into several sections, so if you're pinched for time, you can squeeze in a section here and there throughout your day and still maintain your hectic schedule until a full-time writing career is more within reach.

Even if your schedule isn't hectic, I still recommended reading one section at a time so you can fully absorb the information (especially if you're like me and you're only on a need-to-know basis when it comes to Microsoft Word). I also recommend taking point form notes as you read, so you're not constantly fumbling through the guide as you create your first e-book.

Trust me: the time it will take you to read the guide is beyond worth it. Doing so will not only make your e-book fears disappear, you will have the knowledge in hand to take your career to the next level, and the confidence to follow through.

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