Jon Samsel

Any author worth the name knows from experience that some chapters are harder to write than others. It’s par for the course.

Whether you write one book or 20, you’ll soon discover this for yourself. Some chapters almost write themselves. The work seems to flow. The material seems fresh and vibrant. The writer is enthusiastic and may even feel sad to reach the end of such chapters.

Not so with other chapters. Any author may get stuck at any point. If and when this happens to you, don’t force it. If you get bogged down, try one of the following remedies:

1. Take a break. Relax and think about something else for a while. You will come back refreshed and better able to solve the problem
2. Liquid refreshment may help. Drink a Coke, cup of coffee, tea, or a glass of fruit juice. Nothing stronger. Remember, you’re writing. Liquor and writing don’t mix well
3. Take a brisk walk for 30 minutes or so
4. Try reading the material out loud. This can help
5. If nothing seems to work, knock off work for a few hours or even until the next day

Once they have their book outlines, some writers go through them and mark the chapters they feel will be most interesting or easiest to write, and those that will be the toughest. Then they can alternate between difficult writing, first completing an easy or interesting chapter, followed by a tougher one. Some authors, of course, find every chapter hard to write, while the lucky ones enjoy working on every single part of their books.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 4:23 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.