Anyone who knows how to write has encountered writer’s block. Anyone who knows how to write and has internet access has also encountered the millions of articles attempting to provide a fix for it. Despite trying for decades, I’ve found the only reliable way to break through the block is to simply do something else while I wait it out.
“Nature” walks are a common choice.
I ascribe this to my (self)categorization as a plantser. Despite my stack of project notebooks, I tend to do the bulk of my writing with my eyes closed- literally. If that story in particular isn’t flowing, it won’t flow. There’s a chance that something else will, so it’s far more reasonable to just do that. It’s why I’ve got a tub full of notebooks from middle school in my garage. Writer of all tales, finisher of some.
Breaking the Block
I credit a few things to being able to break through this block. I’m extremely confident in my writing. Extremely. So I knew when the words stopped trickling out it wasn’t going to be solved the same way I (still need to) approach my art block. It had to be a process issue.
I am quite far along with ID. It is entirely blocked into chapters and has been for a year. But going from a beat sheet to a workable script is a challenge. It’s also a challenge because there’s no standardized comic scripting format. In short, unlike the novels that were my bread and butter since age 7, comic scripts were a whole new territory.
Finding the Tool
I made honest attempts to use a few more robust tools to transform my notes to script, but the robustness is what made them unsuitable for me. In the end I landed on a lightweight solution: Dubscript, a free app made for scriptwriters.
Comic scripts are called scripts because they are so similar. This gives me a close enough system that I can edit it for my own needs. Luckily (or unluckily) I am both writer and artist, so I have no need to delineate exact panels. It just has to be comprehensible to post-block me.
Once I started in Dubscript I was able to get two chapters written in pretty quick succession, but again stalled for five months. Five months isn’t quite the five years of my latest art block, but it can easily become it. Something else had to give.
What’s the wall made of?
I used to hate doing dishes. Bear with me here. I hated doing dishes. It took years of therapy to figure out the reason why. Yes there was some trauma and resentment from my childhood. But mostly it sucked because I hated sticking my hands in the water that quickly chilled and was full of murky bits of food. The thought of that was enough to keep me from doing dishes. Living in a landlord specialized apartment with no working dishwasher 10 months out of the lease meant that wasn’t really a viable option. So I fixed the process starting with the parts I hated the most. Now I’m neutral about doing dishes.
When it came to writing the script, the wall I hit was made of character personality. I had their motivations and end goals down, but not how they’d approach things. The concern of making them appear real versus appearing as soulless chess pieces slowed my writing to a crawl.
It took months to simply decide to add personality later. Of course that sounds simple and easy now. But it took five months and deviating into three whole new projects before I figured it out. Don’t let the retrospective blogging fool you.
Keeping Momentum
I will not edit. I will not edit. I WILL NOT EDIT! I’ll keep repeating that until I actually live by it (impossible).
Keeping momentum is essential when you’re likely to be hit with a wave of lethargy at any given moment, blocking your creativity for weeks or months. I don’t have the answer for just pushing through on a single project when your life doesn’t actually depend on it.
The silver lining is that this heavy mental lifting now will pay off when it comes time to put lines down. The great thing about comic writing is there’s less thought required the closer you get to pulling out the brushes. Getting as much down as I can now will allow me to cruise control in the future. It also builds a launch ramp for me to get out of the blocked state faster next time. The first block as years, the next few were months, perhaps the final few will only be a week.
Here’s to hoping.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
fatcr0w 