Writer's Block And Other Urban Legends

by Jay Stringer

I’ve been thinking a lot about writer’s block lately. I was recently asked for some advice on how to deal with it. I did manage to give a practical tip, but I'll leave that for the end.

Writer's block, in my opinion, is nothing more than a bogeyman to scare us at night. William Goldman believes in it, and I tend to go with what he says, but in this instance I’m not so sure.

Okay, perspective check; Goldman is an award winning writer. I’m a guy on a street corner, shouting ideas from a soapbox. I’ll let you decide who to believe, okay?

I see there being three kinds of problem that get labeled as writer's block:

The first kind seems to be an epic affliction. It’s the sort of illness that can only be suffered by very loud and angst-ridden people, who want to share their everyday drama with the world. It seems somehow both noir and arty at the same time. It can cause a writer to go decades –or in some instances half a century- between books. Now, this first kind seems very romantic. You can imagine Raymond Chandler being able to describe this kind of block in very writerly prose.

But myth buster time – is this an affliction, or simply a lack of ideas? Just because everybody has a novel in them, doesn’t mean that we should all be able to crank things out on a yearly basis. Sometimes we just don’t have anything to say, and it seems a peculiar thing to turn this into a great dramatic affliction. Let's face it, the vast majority of people in the world go their entire lives without feeling the urge to write a full-length novel, and yet they don’t go around stressing about being blocked.

The second kind, and the one I have most discussed with people, seems a very specific thing. There’s a deadline looming and the words won’t come, or chapter thirteen just doesn’t want to start. Maybe there’s an action scene that won’t make its way from your head onto the page, or no matter how you try, you cannot make the third paragraph flow. Douglas Adams called it “staring at the page until your forehead bleeds.”

There’s no drama here, though. Not that I can see. No great affliction. This isn’t writer’s block, this is writing. Your brain needs time to work these things out.

Maybe it’s just that I’m a different kind of writer, maybe the above issues are very real concerns for people who work in a different way. For me, I’m very comfortable with the fact that sometimes I may go awhile without setting words on the page. In that time, I may not sit and type, but I’ll be taking a lot of long walks, or way too many showers in a day. Maybe I’ll be re-wiring my guitar or learning a new recipe. Most likely I’ve just found a very interesting crack on the wall to stare at for a few weeks.

This is all writing. It’s giving the cogs in your brain time to spin, time to let things fall into place. I can’t find the exact quote, but I’ll paraphrase as best I can. When William Goldman was asked how long it had taken him to write Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, he answered “It took me a fortnight to write the script, but I’d been thinking about it for six years.”

Is there a third kind? Well, there’s always the issue of deadlines. And sometimes nothing can stop you working better than a deadline. Especially if you have the newest version of Football Manager. But this third version is to be expected, really. If you’re forcing yourself to do something unnatural –to force out the work before it’s ready- of course you’re going to struggle. So again, no drama, no mystery, no affliction.

So far I’ve found three versions of writer’s block. The first and the third one seem to spring out of not paying any heed to the second one. And the second one is not block at all. So I think it’s a myth. A romantic idea we’ve sold ourselves.

But what do I know? I’ve not even got a book out yet. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts; maybe someone has a story they could share about struggling with it?

I do have one piece of practical advice to offer before I wrap up, something that I’ve found useful: Leave your brain wanting more.

Never finish the chapter you’re on. When you’re reaching the end of the day, or morning, or whenever it is you sit and write, stop early. Step back from the computer halfway through a scene, maybe even halfway through a sentence.

That way, when you sit down for the next session, you already know what happens next. You already know how the sentence ends, and you can simply start typing without the worry of a blank page ahead of you.

The State of eBooks and the Stone of Orthanc

“There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more.” - The Smiths

By Steve Weddle

I like to think that Nicholson Baker and I don’t often agree. Turns out, maybe we do.

I first read his stuff when I was at LSU. We’d been assigned “Books as Furniture” in our non-fiction class. The essay was smokin’ hot, looking at all those books stacked up on coffee tables and chests in the Pottery Barn catalogs. Soon I was reading VOX, his phone-sex novella, which was, ahem, smoking hottier. Man, I would have much rather been reading that on an ereader. Some folks kinda move away from you when they see you’re reading that one.

But I’m not so sure I’d want to read it on the Kindle, and here I suppose I tend to agree with Mr. Baker. His recent “A New Page” in the New Yorker explores the Amazon device that costs a little more than the iPod Touch and does a lot less.

Mr. Baker takes a close look at the Kindle and ereading in general. He is, of course, a very bright man. You know this because he writes things such as: “Everybody was saying that the new Kindle was terribly important – that it was an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorization.” Haha. I don’t know what the hell he just said. Something about the Kindle being important because you can read the Steve Gutenberg biography, I think.

Anyway, the Kindle is fantastically popular, because once you spend a few hundred bucks or more on the device, you’re able to buy $10 ebooks. I’m not certain I understand why this is popular. I generally don’t understand why things are popular. (Except that slap chop re-mix on the YouTubes. That’s gold, Jerry. Gold.)

So it’s nice that Mr. Baker takes the time and the New Yorker’s budget to fly around talking to people about why they love the Kindle. “Maybe, I thought,” he thought, “if I ordered this wireless Kindle 2 I would be pulled into a world of compulsive, demonic book consumption, like Pippin staring at the stone of Orthanc.” Again, um, no idea. However, if I were reading this article on the Kindle, I could just connect to Wikipedia and look up this Orthanc thing. Turns out the name Orthanc, according to the great W, “means both ‘Mount Fang’ in Sindarin, and ‘Cunning Mind’ in Old English, the language Tolkien uses to ‘translate’ Rohirric.” I had to wait to find this out until my iPod Touch was within range of a Wi-Fi network, by the way. Still, I feel so much better now that I have access to all of this information I don’t understand.


I think this would be a problem with the Kindle, this linking to the world of information. If I’m reading a book or article on paper, I’m much less likely to go from rathole to rathole, searching out answers to questions I only vaguely understand. I’m more likely to just sit down and work my way through a book, in linear fashion. The problem with the Kindle, one of the problems, is that it opens up the whole world to you, by way of being connected to everything on the Internet. You want to download the next book in a series as you’re finishing this one? The Kindle is for you. If you’re a curious person, though, I’d think you’d be as tempted as I am to clicky-click on a word to find out more. (My attention tends to scatter off like birdshot after a drunk neighbor.) I read ebooks on my iPod Touch, so I’d have many more steps to find the information, which, as I've mentioned, would only be accessible when Wi-Fi was present.

I don’t know how you are (Seriously, how could I?) but I’m more likely to finish a book on my iPod Touch than I am a print copy. If I get to page 20 of a paperback and I’m not sure about continuing, I’ll just set it down. There it is, over on the shelf. I can see it. It exists. I can go get it in a couple of days if I feel like it. I'm not afraid to set it aside, because I can pick it back up and start reading again. But on the ereader, it’s gone. I close that file and open another one and it falls back into ones and zeroes, as if it doesn’t really exist. The new ebook acquires the space of the older one. I have no second chance with that book. In a couple of days, if I’m in the mood for a thriller, I’ll be unlikely to go back into the list of files on the iPod Touch and search for that one. I’d be much more likely to notice it laid sideways on the bookshelf, waiting for me to pick it back up when I’m in the mood. So moving from one ebook to another is forever. I have to keep reading the ebook or it’s gone. I have a couple dozen books on my iPod Touch. Every book I’ve started there I’ve finished, except Shutter Island, which I’m currently reading. That’s far from true about the shelves in my house.

On the iPod Touch, I can read books in many forms, unlike the proprietary Kindle files on the Kindle. (Buy a book at the Kindle store and you can only read it on the Kindle or Kindle-licensed products.) I have Stanza (pictured), eReader, B&N eReader , and the Kindle reader on my iPod Touch. Each piece of software offers various reasons to use it. The Kindle software syncs up with the Kindle store, allowing me to buy Kindle books without having a Kindle. Stanza has great links to online stores with a good deal of free content.

And that’s what this is all about, finally. Content. Would you read a book on a small screen such as the iPod Touch? I tried with the first Palm I ever had, the Palm M125 which I’ll blog about in a couple of weeks. Reading on that Palm did not work. Reading on the iPod Touch does. As Mr. Baker says about the iPod Touch in his essay, “The nice thing about this machine is (a) it’s beautiful, and (b) it’s not imitating anything.” Now that’s something I can understand.

The iPod Touch is my music player, my blog reader, my email checker, my soccer manager player. I use it to check the weather, read my Word files and update my Facebook status. The thing is always with me. That’s the main reason I get so much read on it. It fits into my pocket. Whatever book I’m reading is always with me as long as it’s on my iPod Touch. And isn’t that what we want? Books that stay with us.

Who Are We?

A story is only as good as its characters, and here are ours;

MONDAY: STEVE WEDDLE
Steve Weddle has prepared for crime fiction writing with an education in poetry and a career in newspapers. Quick writing. Imagery. Facts. Crime.

Weddle grew up near Shreveport, Louisiana, the setting for his first novel. He devoured science fiction and fantasy, as well as the occasional literary novel. Harry Harrison. Steven Brust. Graham Greene. Writers who dealt with crime fiction, despite genre differences. After graduating with an MFA in poetry from Louisiana State University, Weddle did what most poets do. He got a job that had nothing to do with poetry.

Weddle began his newspaper work as a temporary fill-in for an ad
compositor and eventually became editor of a neighboring paper. For 10 years, he wrote about small town crime, local politicians and county fair jellies.

Weddle said that he isn’t interested in big-time thrillers or high-powered crime right now. “The small town stuff, that’s what interests me. How local people go over the line,” he said. “One time, true story, I was standing with a defendant outside a courthouse and he told me how he was going to kill me because of the coverage I was giving to the case. Something pushed this guy over the line. Something that gets inside you and makes you do one bad thing after another. Maybe it’s evil. Maybe it’s something else. That thing. That’s the thing I’m interested in.”

Now a newspaper publisher, Weddle spends his writing hours working on his crime fiction.

TUESDAY: JAY STRINGER
DSD: Tell us a little about yourself?
JS: Born in 1980. Not dead yet.
DSD: Very droll. But really, who are you?
JS: Well, I’m a writer. I grew up in an area of England called the Black Country, but I’m currently living in Glasgow with my fiancée and an imaginary monkey. My first novel is under submission right now, and I’m very excited about it.
DSD: Why do you write? I mean, rather than doing something productive like, say, PS3?
JS: The simple answer is that there are stories I want to read that haven’t been written yet. And so I need to write them. The longer answer is that I’ve not been any good at expressing myself other ways- I sucked at comedy, music and real work. Writing lets me be myself, and to look at issues that interest me.
DSD: And why crime fiction?
JS: Well, that was sort of by accident. I like to read and write about real people and tough situations. I’m drawn toward social fiction, and I like a strong sense of time and place. I’m not that attracted to using too many words, and I don’t really like navel gazing or talking tigers. Crime just seems to be the place where I ended up, but I think most of the great writers of the past would be labeled as crime in the modern market. Just look at Steinbeck, total crime writer.
DSD: So are you a political writer?
JS: No, no way. I'm either not good enough or not bad enough to be political. I'd like to think I'm a social writer, but that also sounds very serious and worthy. I don't take myself seriously enough to worry about all of that, I just like to write about people who don't always do the right thing. And to throw in a few jokes and Harrison Ford references.
DSD: Tell us something interesting about yourself?
JS: Depending on who asks, I was named after either Jimi Hendrix or Irish whiskey.
DSD: Where can we see some of your writing?
JS: Well, like I said, my first novel is under submission right now. I’m represented by Decker Literary, and I’ll tell you more when we have it. Other than that, I have two stories I’m proud of here and here and of course, you’ll see me here every Tuesday.

WEDNESDAY: JOHN McFETRIDGE
I'm the author of the crime novels Dirty Sweet, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and the upcoming Swap which will be published in Canada in September and in the USA as Let It Ride in February. Why the different title? That may be the subject of a blog entry here soon.

For the last six months I've also been a member of the writing team of the TV show The Bridge which will debut in the USA on CBS and in Canada on CTV sometime in the next TV season.

I've also written a dozen or so flash fictions and a couple of short stories available for free from my website as an e-book, Flash.

With Do Some Damage I'm going to share my experiences in publishing and TV as best I can. In Canada I'm published by a small press and in the USA I was one of the writers caught in the middle when Harcourt merged with Houghton Miflin. I've since signed with Thomas Dunne Books at St.Martins, which has been great so far. And TV writing is whole different animal, so I'll have some things to say about that (the money is good, the peope are great everything else is frustrating as hell).

THURSDAY: DAVE WHITE
I've published two PI Novels: the Shamus and Strand Award nominated WHEN ONE MAN DIES and THE EVIL THAT MEN DO. Both received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. I'm currently at work on a 3rd novel.

When not writing I teach 8th graders and watch my maturity level sink. Its one of my favorite things to do. I'm involved in The Dave and Krewer Show podcast. I also blog over at my own site.

I'll be blogging here at Do Some Damage on Thursdays and will spend the rest of the week pretending Jay Stringer has facial hair. That way I can stand out as the cleancut member of the DSD crew.

FRIDAY: RUSSEL D McLEAN
From the files of J. McNee, Private Investigator, Dundee, Scotland.

Subj. McLean, Russel D.

Occupation: Author. Reviewer. Occasional bookseller. Miscreant.

Observing subject now for three days. Time split between place of employment and home, where subject frequently sits in darkened rooms. Audio observation reveals sound of constant typing and occasional bursts of profanity.
Monitoring of email communication mentions novels published in UK; the forthcoming THE LOST SISTER and, previously, THE GOOD SON. US currently preparing for publication in Dec ’09

Misc. notes:

Subject ran webzine for approx. five years, give or take deadlines. Crimescenescotland has now moved and is still thriving, albeit as a review site when subject was unable to continue editing extremely dark crime short stories.
McLean is a fan of noir and hardboiled fiction, but loves genre fiction of all stripes. Unless it involves anything cute. He has an allergy to cute. Along with an allergy to mushrooms.

Gang affiliations include Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Spinetingler Ezine, The Thrilling Detective and Crime Spree magazine.

Frequently found at: www.theseayemeanstreets.blogspot.com, www.dosomedamage.com, www.thrillerwriters.org

Witness Statements:

“THE GOOD SON is the most exciting, and gripping, Scottish crime fiction debut of recent years.” John Connolly

“Scottish crime fiction is entering a new era and Russel McLean is at the vanguard.” Tony Black

SATURDAY: SCOTT D PARKER
I’m a writer and blogger who came late to the crime fiction party.
As a charter member of the Star Wars Generation, I was all about science fiction and fantasy and comic books. “Real life” stuff just didn’t interest me. I did have a soft spot for The Hardy Boys and, later, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, but that was the extent of my association with crime fiction.

In the mid-1980s, things began to change. I discovered Sherlock Holmes on paper and Jeremy Brett as the great sleuth on PBS’s Mystery. If I had to peg something as the seed of my eventual love of crime and mystery fiction, it would be Holmes.
Still I rarely read any mystery fiction. Can’t really say why, either. SF and fantasy were just more exciting for me. That was until I read Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. His 2001 novel just blew me away. Never before had I realized how good crime fiction could be and what it could do. Rapidly I sought out others like him: George Pelecanos and Richard Price, to name but two. I was hooked.

When it came time to write my first novel in 2005, my new respect for crime fiction coupled with my two degrees in history led me to write a historical mystery featuring Harry Truman. As much fun as that project was, I still considered my knowledge in crime fiction to be lacking. Thus, in 2008, I put myself through a Crime Fiction Self-Education Course. I read all the old masters (Cain, Hammett, Chandler, Keene, Wade Miller) as well as modern practitioners of the form (Lehane, Pelecanos, Block, Guthrie, Winslow, Faust, Swierczynski). Hard Case Crime was instrumental in this education as that publisher introduced me to many new names I just never knew.

Now, I’m firmly in the crime fiction camp and I’ll never leave. Turns out “real life” stuff is much more exciting and complex than I ever knew.

SUNDAY: MIKE KNOWLES
I am a Canadian crime writer with two books to my name.
My books to date have been written from the perspective of a criminal. I love to read the bad guy and even more I love to write the bad guy. My choice to write this kind of book stems from a chance encounter with a copy of The Hunter by Richard Stark. The book was a complete one eighty from the type of material I had been exposed to by school and my parents. Up until then I had only read classics and the usual high school fodder. The book was raw, gritty, violent, and visceral - everything The Stone Angel wasn’t. I read through it in about a day and devised a plan to buy every book in the series using rare book dealers from all over North America. I moved from Stark to Spillane and then onto any other pulp writer I could find.

My books are set in the city I call home. I chose Hamilton as the setting because the city has everything: diversity, wealth, poverty, crime, and concrete tons of concrete. Hamilton is usually hidden in the shadow of Toronto and most people don’t know about its history of mob families and urban crime. I grew up around countless armchair experts of local crime and heard the stories whispered in the school cafeterias and local coffee shops. My city scared me as a youth and I did my best to not set foot in the core. It was a fantastic surreal place where people seemed harder and tougher than anywhere else. Downtown was the kind of place where you would roll up the windows and lock the doors in the summer heat just to make sure outside couldn’t get in. But as I grew up, I learned that the city has a hard beauty like a female boxer in the tenth round. Each rough edge makes Hamilton more interesting and more exotic than almost anywhere else I can think of.

I work hard to write books with a pulse, not a slow steady beat, but a driving arrhythmia that pushes faster and faster towards the eventual crash. It is my hope that both Darwin’s Nightmare and Grinder are something that will resonate with crime and mystery fans who just can’t seem to get the taste of hardboiled pulp out of their mouths.


Okay, so now you know the players. That's enough small talk, lets see what kind of mayhem these boys can cause each week...