Intimidation and Writer’s Block

Posted by Jennifer Jensen Apr 9, 2008

About two decades ago, when I had been writing for just a few years, I attended my first children’s writer’s conference. It was an intense, weeklong event. Morning speakers filled our brains, and we spent the afternoons in workshops with the same group and instructor each day. Evenings included dinner, keynote addresses and/or writing time.

Things that I had “known” became more in-depth that week: interweaving action and dialogue, making dialogue real, finding the conflict in a story, making characters real, making setting an integral part of the story. The list could go on. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

I had set aside another week at home to just write, to use what I had learned. But when I tried, all I could think about was how much I had to incorporate to write a decent story. It had to start with a bang, have incredible characters and a fast-paced narrative. Its language had to sing, dialogue needed to be snappy, and the whole thing needed to be relative, real, and important to a child. And I couldn’t do it.

If the scope of everything it takes to write well seems too much to you, you’re not alone. It took me six months to get past it - don’t let it stop you that way!

Give yourself permission, deep-down gut-level permission, to write something other than a perfect story. It might be practice writing, poetry, character studies, or just junk. You’ll find more ideas in The Complex Scope of Writing a Novel. Then, no matter how good or bad the end product is, write!