So I would say a couple things to that. One, writer’s block is something that happens to me all the time, and my advice is basically to take a break, and for me, I’ll take a break for a few minutes or a few days or a few months. But that’s not an option you have if you’re taking a test and you have 15 minutes to finish this essay or there’s an assignment and it has to be done by the end of the day.
That said, sitting there saying like, think, think, think, what’s that next thing? Putting yourself in that stress is not going to help you write. So if it’s a piece of homework, take a break. You know, I will try to do something that has nothing to do with writing, so I’ll take a shower or wash the dishes or I’ll wash my car.
So that’s a good thing to do if you’re at home, you have a little bit more of that time. Just take a break, come over and wash my car. I think that’s a great thing that you should do. If it’s in class, just think of something like – maybe can you get up? Can you go sharpen your pencil and – you don’t want to be the kid who sharpens his pencil 18 times while everybody else is trying to write.
But if you’re sitting there stuck, go sharpen your pencil. Or just sit there and close your eyes at your desk for a little while. Just give yourself 30 seconds, a minute to reset. Being a writer as a job can be different from being a writer in class, and I think the big difference is just sort of the amount of time I have to do my job versus the amount of time you have to do your job as a kid in class.
And it’s really tough. I have a lot of sympathy. But it’s good training, too, and it’s possible to do. Not everything you do has to be perfect. Even when I have all of this time for myself, the things I do aren’t perfect, and that can be the hardest part about writing, is, the perfect idea in your head – the hardest part about writing for me, a lot of times, is that distance between the perfect idea in your head and this flawed thing on the page.
And it can be really hard to overcome that. And it’s sort of like a tragedy that happens again and again. And I can remember the feeling when I was a kid, being so excited about the idea and then the thing I was writing wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Or, you know, sometimes not even having to do with writing, you know, you get a huge cardboard box. It’ll be the most exciting thing.
I would start planning my fort. Cut out the windows. I wanted like the windows that open like this, but I cut it out wrong, and one of the – it would just fall to the ground, and then my drawing wasn’t good. Everything was sloppy. It looked nothing like this thing in my head. And it was almost unbearable, the difference between those things. You want it to be like it is in your head.
But it’s important to just get over that. If you have 30 minutes, then you try to write the best thing you can write in 30 minutes, and that’s not going to be the thing that will be the best thing that you could write in three days or in two years. And even that thing probably won’t be as perfect as the thing in your head. Nothing I’ve ever written has been as perfect as the idea I had for it when I set out.
But you just kind of have to set your teeth and say, I’m going to work through the disappointment, because it can be less than you want it to be but still very good.
