In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, April Dávila suggests that your writers block might be fixed by changing formats. Davila recently started a new project but hit a brick wall at the 13,000 word mark. “I simply couldn’t think of what else to write,” she says.
Dávila wasn’t feeling burned out and she knew what she had planned for the story. So what was the problem? After some contemplation, she realized that she wasn’t writing what she thought she was writing. “One of the things I explore with blocked writers is the question of whether, perhaps, they’re writing in the wrong format,” she explains. “For instance, they think they’re writing a short story, but it’s really meant to be a poem. Or they’re writing an essay that really should be a memoir.”
Upon reviewing her ideas, Dávila realized that she was writing a shorter novella, rather than a novel. Realizing the work could be contained in the 10,000 – 40,000 word range, she saw that the story structure on the page started to make more sense. “I spent Thursday and Friday reorganizing what I had into a new structure, writing some scenes that suddenly needed to be written, and then BAM, I had a first draft,” she writes.
She shares a list of questions to ask if you think you might be writing in the wrong format. “This is one of those rare times in life when realizing you’ve been wrong is actually really exciting,” Dávila concludes.
