Many writing coaches and books say when you find yourself stuck, stop worrying about the Big Picture, just concentrate on writing the next sentence. Ask “What happens next?” At some point, you’ll stop struggling sentence by sentence again, and the words will start flowing.
One of these days I’m going to complete my collection of blog posts on the theme “Write anything until you write something.” It’s approximately the same context. Just get your fingers moving, writing gibberish if you have to, and keep them moving until your thoughts begin to organize themselves into the “real” next sentence, the “real” story, you know, “What you sat down to write in the first place but didn’t realize.”
Some of my favorite writings happened that way. I kept typing – or scrawling nonsense in my journal – until thoughts began to coalesce and what do you know, look what I wrote.
I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but what the heck, you’re just staring at the screen anyway. Why not instead of staring, you start typing. Anything. If you have to, write “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” over and over until you get tired of writing it and suddenly the fox plows into the dog and they get into a snarling, drag out fight, or the fox says, “I beg your pardon, I didn’t see you sleeping there,” or miracle of miracles, you think of the next sentence.
Just write anything until you write something. That’s how this post happened.
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