Writer’s Block and Other Nasty Diseases

I’ve had a very interesting year and it’s only a quarter of the way over.  It started off with my first ever bout of the dreaded WRITER’S BLOCK.  That disease we all hope will never infect us…but usually does at one point or another in our careers as authors.

I’d read a lot about writer’s block before experiencing it and I’ve heard many discussions concerning how to take the cure.  Some were helpful.  Some were not.  The fact is, there was only one way for me to deal with it and that was to write in spite of it.  You’re probably thinking…the woman’s nuts!  If you’re suffering from writer’s block, you CANNOT write.  Hmm…  I don’t buy it.  If you can type on your keyboard, you can write.  You may write gibberish, you may write trash, but you CAN write.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  As a born analyzer, before I sat down to make myself write, I had to figure out what disease ridden bacteria was attacking my writer’s brain.  Okay…first off – I had post-surgery depression and sleep deprivation.  Hmm…those made good excuses not to write, but I sensed there was something more than the fact I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning at work here.

And there was…I had an agent.  Golden and magical words for the unpublished author.  Right?  Yes.  Absolutely!  But NOT without cost.  Before you get an agent, you are in charge of your submissions and no one cares more about getting those books out there than you do.   Your work is the only work that matters…to you.  But an agent has other clients.  An agent can’t just drop everything to read your next manuscript and determine whether or not s/he wants to represent it.

For a fast writer, this is like a death sentence to creativity.  At least for me it was.  Why bother writing a book when it wasn’t going to be submitted any time soon, when I didn’t even know if my agent liked my latest submission?  Now, there were two ways I could see to fix this.

1. Start entering contests again. (I’d stopped once I signed with an agent, believing I no longer needed the exposure contests would give me.)
2. Write in a subgenre of romance that did not require agent representation and did not conflict with the work my agent already had.

Lucky for me, I had a story burning a hole in my heart wanting to be written, but this story was outside of the normal subgenres in which I wrote.  It was a story targeted at a line of romance that buys new authors about as often as I buy new houses…which isn’t often if you take my meaning.  But I had to write this book.  So…I sat down and wrote.  Imagine a dentist pulling your wisdom teeth without anesthesia, using an instrument of torture that extracted the tooth one millimeter every ten minutes.  Are you getting a really gruesome picture here?

So was I when I started writing again.  It took me weeks to finish Chapter One when normally I can finish a chapter in a day if I push it.  Then…I had to delete pages and pages because they were all wrong!  Remember that gibberish thing I mentioned earlier?  This is where it came in.  Writing when I had nothing but the will to write making me go forward, writing when my creative muse appeared to have taken a permanent vacation.  The little bugger didn’t come back until about the third chapter.  I finished the book in six weeks, taking the same amount of time to write the last ten chapters as it had to write the first three.  I polished it and got the opportunity to have one of my “keeper shelf” authors critique my partial and synopsis.  Sounds like I was floating along now, right?

I wish, wish, wish that were true.  But when I sat down to write that blankety, blank synopsis, I discovered I had SYNOPSIS WRITER’S BLOCK.  I’m not a swearing person, so I didn’t storm around my house turning the air blue, but boy did I feel like it!  How can a person get SYNOPSIS WRITER’S BLOCK?  Now that I look around me, I realize it’s relatively easy.  How many writers would give half their next advance not to have to write one ever again?

I actually used to love writing the things.  I thought I was pretty good at it.  After all, I’d gotten requests for full manuscripts off my partials and synopses.  I’d attracted more than one agent’s interest in my work with the same, so what in the world was the matter now?  I can tell you in one word: CONTESTS.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten a great deal out of contests and highly recommend them for a host of reasons.  But...my synopses got reamed by some of my contest judges.  And all of the sudden I thought I couldn’t write a synopsis for dirt.  I was shocked I’d managed to stumble along until now without realizing it.  I even had the craven thought that I wouldn’t have to write another synopsis for a while since I had an agent submitting full manuscripts on my behalf to single title houses.

And then to overcome WRITER’S BLOCK, I’d gone and written a manuscript I would have to submit as a partial and a synopsis!  Prayers went Heavenward, while my heart plummeted to the floor.  Because not only would I have to submit this thing to an editor, but right now I had to write it in order to send my work in for critique.

So, how did I break my SYNOPSIS WRITER’S BLOCK?  The same way I started writing again.  I forced myself to do it.  I stayed up until six o’clock in the morning to get my rough draft done and it wasn’t a pretty sight.  (Now the dentist is asking if I want adult braces and grinning evilly as he plays with the device used to tighten them.)  The next day, I re-read my synopsis.  Again… and again… and again.

Taking the cure for WRITER’S BLOCK is no easy task.  It’s ugly.  It’s grueling and it requires you to dig deep into your soul to find the answer, but the results are amazing.  I’m more proud of this manuscript than any other I have written.

If you’re suffering from this not so fatal disease, ask yourself what the contributors to it are.  A feeling of hopelessness?  Too many bad critiques?  A major change in your lifestyle you have not yet brought into compliance with your desire to write?  A lack of support from those closest to you?  Boredom with your manuscript?  Fear of failure?  Whatever the cause, there is a solution, but you’ve got to look for it and you have to be willing to dig in the trenches to get there.

I’ll leave you with a quote from my mother, who probably got it from her mother as each generation before her had done as well:  NOTHING WORTH HAVING ISN’T WORTH WORKING FOR.

Note:  The book I wrote to bust out of writer's block became my first sale.  The Greek Tycoon's Ultimatum.  And while I admired my agent tremendously, I think we both realized our visions for my career did not match and we severed our business relationship. I still count her a friend.

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Suggested Tips for Formatting Your Manuscript

These are tips, not rules written in stone.  There are contest guidelines that will vary and even some publishers who ask for things to be done a little differently.

1. Margins:  Set margins at 1” all the way around and the header at .5”.  (This formatting is for submission to editors, not contests.  Always follow a contest’s formatting guidelines when entering a contest.)
   
   
2. Spacing:  The entire manuscript should be double-spaced. 

Exceptions:


• Scene breaks are denoted with a double double-space.  Using ### centered on the middle line of the double double-space will help copyeditors detect a scene change when it occurs between pages, therefore it is suggested ### be used in addition to the double double-space consistently for scene changes.


• First line of the chapter should be double double-spaced from CHAPTER NUMBER.


• Log lines should be double double-spaced from CHAPTER NUMBER and from the first line of text.


• If the “log line” is more than one line, its lines are single-spaced.

Example:  Hartford House
                London, England, 1890

3.  Turn off widow/orphan control for entire document.

4.  Fonts:  Do not use fancy fonts on your submission.  Use a 12 PT readable font.  Courier New is recommended as it is a non-proportional font (meaning each letter takes up the same width on the page) which allows editors to get a more accurate word count according to their standard formula.  Times New Roman is also considered readable, but will not give as accurate a word count

Examples:


Your font type will impact your word count. (Courier)

Your font type will impact your word count. (Lucida Bright)

Your font type will impact your word count. (Tahoma)

Your font type will impact your word count. (Arial)

Your font type will impact your word count. (Times New Roman)

As you can see, Each font, including other non-proportional fonts like Lucida Bright, will heavily impact your manuscript word count as they allow more characters per page (more actual words) than the standard Courier New which is the assumed font when using the Word Count Formula.  Publishers also prefer “footed fonts” and Arial is not a footed font.

5.  Word count:  When all of the above formatting has been done – each page is worth 250 words regardless of whether or not it is full.  Do not use the computer’s word count for your manuscripts word count.  (However…if you are using TNR then you must use 333 – which is still only approximate – for your multiplier.)  For properly formatted manuscripts printed in Courier New:


• A 200 page manuscript is 50,000 words.
  
  
• A 300 page manuscript is 75,000 words.
  
  
• A 400 page manuscript is 100,000 words.

6.  Justification:  All pages should be left justified.


Exception:  CHAPTER NUMBER should be centered on the page.

7.  TITLE and CHAPTER NUMBER should be typed in all caps.

8.  Begin CHAPTER ONE ½ of the way down the page. 

9.  Begin CHAPTER TWO and beyond 1/3 of the way down the page.

10.  Begin Synopsis at the top of the page with a centered header (BOOK TITLE – SYNOPSIS) and double – double space down before beginning your synopsis.

11.  Print on only one side of the page, using an adequately full print cartridge or toner package to avoid streaks or faint lines, on bright white paper of no less than 20 lb. weight.

12.  Use your spell checker and have someone else read your manuscript for grammatical errors.

13.  Italicized text: is not italicized in a manuscript, but use underlining to denote italics.

14.  Do not bold anything – including your title – in a manuscript.

15.  Headers:  Example header below –


MANUSCRIPT TITLE                   AUTHOR NAME – PAGE #

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