Look at your fears
John (not his real name) and I had gotten about 3/4 of the way through
the book I was ghosting for him when he got bogged down. Until then,
he'd been responsive to my emails, prompt about editing the manuscript I
sent him, and generally an ideal ghostwriting client.
I didn't even realize what was happening at first. He'd promised to
generate rough drafts on the final two chapters. In the past he'd taken
less than a week to send me copy. After about two weeks, when I hadn't
gotten anything, I emailed him. "I got distracted," he replied, "I'll
get back on it." Ten days later I got a similar email.
When I finally reached him by phone it became obvious that he simply
had no idea how to get started with either of the two chapters, even
though he had wanted to write them himself.
As we talked more about them, I realized that these last chapter cut
close to the bone for him. They involved incidents that were both
important to the book, but also could, if not handled properly, reveal
way more than he was willing to reveal.
Why People Stop Writing
While there are all sorts of reasons someone might stop writing a book
somewhere in the middle, it's often something not unlike John's
situation. We reach a point in the text where we need to tell stories on
ourselves and we become fearful about how public we really want to be.
Or we have a strong opinion and are, at some level, afraid to go public
with it.
Fear of some sort is the usual cause of these blocks.
Here's an approach that often works:
- Go back to your purpose statement. Re-reading your
purpose statement, contemplating it even, will tend to ground you
back in why you started writing your book in the first place. This
may be enough to get you going again.
- Start writing something - anything. Open a new file and
pour your heart out about what's next to write, and how you feel
about it. Pay particular attention to any fears that come up and
determine if they are real or not. You may have to do this
freeform-not-to-be-in-the-book writing over several days. Chances
are, you'll begin to see what you want to include in the book and
what you want to leave out.
- Turn off your internal editor and any other disapproving
voice when you're doing this kind of freeform writing. I sometimes
thank them and assure them they will get to contribute later, just
not now.
- Talk with someone about what's going on. This could be a
supportive friend, a fellow writer or even a book coach.
- Set the book aside for a week or two. Don't leave it much
longer than a couple of weeks, but a deliberate break like
this will often shed new light on where you're stuck.
John's Problem Solved
As it happened, my conversation with John gave me enough information
to do a couple of very short drafts. With his permission, I wrote those
and they gave him enough to chew on so we were able to complete his
book.
The point is is almost all writers get blocked at some point or
another... and there's always a way to work through it so you can finish
your book.
Write well and often!
