All writers have been through a moment they don't feel inspired. You sit in front of your computer, take a deep breath and try to write anything that comes to mind. Then suddenly you realize you’ve been staring at a blank page for over an hour.
I've been through those days when I thought I couldn't write anything and wondered whether my block would last for years. Or what if it lasted forever and I could never write again?
And then there were days when I would write 2.000 words in an hour's sitting and ideas won't stop flowing even long after I'm done writing.
I came to realize the difference between those two instances is my habits. Writing, like everything else in our lives, is a habit that you build slowly, every day, with patience. There's going to be tears. And there's going to be stress. But just like it takes daily practice to become a pianist and daily training to become a football player, writing takes practice and patience.
If you only write on weekends, your book will take twice the time it would have and the ending won't be consistent with the beginning because by the time the book is finished, chances are you won't remember how it begun. And editing will be much harder for that reason.
I have noticed that when I take a long break, writing feels strange. I could hardly get 100 words down. When I write every day, on the other hand, writing seems so easy, I'm dragged within the story the entire time I write, and when the timer goes off it feels like waking up from a deep sleep.
Writing every day isn't easy. At first it will feel forced. But once you've been doing it for 2 weeks or so, you'll notice the change. The characters will introduce themselves fully and they'll start taking action and speaking for themselves. If you're not a writer and you're reading this, you'll probably think I'm crazy.
Writers know that they are only in charge of what is happening in the first pages of the story. Characters in books are a real-life example of Pinocchio (sort of). Puppets that come to life. First you handle them as you wish, then they make their own way in their world. All a writer has to do is watch them closely and write down their moves and decisions.
So once you are familiar with your protagonist, you can trust that they will keep the story going. But that will not happen if you haven't met your protagonist yet.
One would argue that taking a break might help. It might if you're a professional writer who does not need another job to sustain themselves. When you have to work and you write because you're passionate about writing, you can't afford breaks because time is limited. You can't take a break and get back to writing a couple of hours later. A break for someone like me means not writing for days. DAYS. And the more I don't write, the worse I feel and the more difficult it is to get back to writing after the break.
I've also heard that outlining helps writer's block. If you know exactly what's going to happen in each chapter, you can't have a block. Some people do work better with outlines. But the rest of us don't. It's not that outlines suspend creativity. I always have a rough outline when I begin writing. I just never stick to it. I change my outline every time my characters make a decision I hadn't anticipated.
Have you ever read a book where characters seem forced and identical? Like, each person described is the same with the previous, just with a different gender or hair or clothes? They all talk the same, they all use the same curse words, they all love the same movie genre (which just happens to be the author's very favorite genre), and the same beer. And if one of the characters is a little different you know it because the narrator told you and not because their actions showed it.
Puppets. Strict outlines with no flexibility and fear of writer's block lead to stories ran by puppets.
The only way to defeat writer's block is to sit down, write a scene or two the first days, and then keep going until the characters come to life and choose their own path. You can always go back and edit a forced beginning; you cannot, however, edit a blank page. At least, that's what has worked for me. I don't think I'd ever have finished writing my novel while pursuing a PhD, if I didn't write every day.
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