don't kill your darlings exile them writer's block morgue

Don’t Kill Your Darlings. Exile Them.

I don’t believe in writer’s block, but man was I stuck on this novel.

I say that in passing, but I’m forgetting that some of you don’t know I finished the third draft my fourth novel (my first publishable novel). See the update bars < if you’re looking at this on a laptop. Mobile will have them below /.

So that happened. Huzzah.

Okay, back to block people.

Rothfuss said it best, “Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block.” I think, generally, if I’m stuck on a piece it’s either because ::

  1. Distraction and anxiety have gotten in the way of my work or
  2. My ignorance has limited me. I’m up against a problem I haven’t yet encountered. If this happens, I shouldn’t freak out. I need to learn something about my opponent, about the block itself.

And I had two problems I hadn’t encountered this time around. Most people would call this “blocked,” but I call alleged “writers block” simply a worthy opponent. Every block is different, as is every opponent.

But first…

Anxiety and distraction.

I solve the anxiety and distraction problem by getting away from society and getting to a quiet place. In that quiet place I meditate (not Eastern meditation, I mean something more akin to prayer). I journal and I sit still and tell my body that sometimes it’s better to build an architecture of time than an architecture of space. I spend most of my weeks saying “I wish I had more time.” Well, The Sabbath is the day that I do have more time, the day that I build palaces and castles and giant freaking starship cruisers (complete with photon torpedoes) out of time rather than money or success out of space.

I literally make time.

I do this not by Netflix binge-watching. Not by to-do-list reading. But by dabbling in random books that peak my interest and I do not need to finish. Petting my dog for egregious amounts of time. Napping with my wife. Playing a board game. Eating leftovers. Hanky panky. But mostly thinking. Dreaming. Hoping. Praying to God the Father, which amounts not to a religious ritual but to a conversation with my friend. When I’m at my best, this too is Sabbath.

As my friend Ellie said recently:

“Some days I have to decide whether I want to be a professional writer or a professional internet browser.”

The internet really is best described as a web – an interconnected set of sticky threads that will catch you if you’re not careful. And who knows what might come along and inject its digestive juices into you once you’re caught in that snare…

So the other thing I did to combat anxiety and distractions in the last three months was install Freedom. I literally block The Internet when it’s time to write. When I’m disciplined with it, this is a beautiful thing. Thank you, Neil Gaiman. You have now changed the trajectory of my career for a third time.

Combatting ignorance.

But there were other pieces to this “stuck.” Sometimes I need to learn new information, which I’ll handle in the comments below, but sometimes I need to learn how to use a new tool. One piece of my ignorance played out like this: I was stuck not because of what I hadn’t written, but because of what I had. I knew that I needed to take an axe to some sections and completely disintegrate others into non-being, but I also knew some of these parts were workable bits of back story that I simply needed to relocate into other sections of the book, rework them into sections I had yet to write.

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Then at the tail end of Writer’s UnBoxed Unconference (which I surprisingly never blogged about — I’m woefully behind on blogging), actually on the ride back to Boston, my new Aussie friend Jo Eberhardt told me she uses a “morgue” file. She highlights sections she’s unsure about. Cuts them. Pastes them into the document.

This may be the most liberating thing I’ve heard in years.

There were times in this novel where I literally highlighted fifteen thousand words and pressed DELETE and started again. That’s basically a novella, gone. It’s not as dramatic as the time I took a typewritten novel manuscript (not in Shunn manuscript format, but just typewritten) and covered it in gasoline and struck a match, but it’s just as effective. Some of those fifteen thousand words were decent, a few were great, most of it was trash.

Other times in the writing, I couldn’t bring myself to do something that drastic. Not because I thought the given passage was gold, but because I couldn’t quite place when and where the passage went wrong, and so it stayed like a symbiont, a parasite, but one I could live with.

The morgue changed all of that. Some of it made it back into the novel. In the most extreme example, a small part of this long passage I cut from page 7 made it back into the novel on page 394. Most of it stayed out.

So yes, you need to kill your darlings, those passages you hold dear, the times you think the writing’s gold when it’s awful. But sometimes all of your children are blame-shifting one another and you don’t know which one to discipline. They all need to be put in time out so you can smoke out the darling among them, weed out the mole, the passage that needs eviscerated.

Don’t kill your darlings, exile them.

Create two files when you start – one for the stuff you’re putting in and one for the stuff you’re taking out. If your work is healthy, both files should grow as the novel grows and there should be a healthy amount of smuggling across the border between the two, exports and imports.

One of the guilds I work with in the city suggests something similar. The leader of the songwriter’s guild, Ben Grace, suggests his fellow songwriters dump every little voice memo and sound clip and lyrical phrase into one big Google Drive folder. Then as they start to coagulate, he moves them over to another folder. Stuff that only needs a new paint job he relocates in a third folder. Call them the “Bucket, Chunk, Marinade” folders if you will, but the point’s the same : you need a place where your good thoughts can congregate and then excommunicate other thoughts that don’t belong in your work in progress.

There are other things I learned this time around that got me past that second ignorance barrier, but most of those involved tricks for colliding characters or inserting more foreshadowing or making life harder on my protagonist or integrating my world’s sociological strata. Typical rewrite stuff and typical next-level tweaks like a golfer working on his downswing.

However, this morgue idea was a completely new one on me and it made a world of difference, so thanks Jo.

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 •••

Readers get free stories and artists get encouraged ::

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  1. lanceschaubert

    From McKee:

    “There is no such thing as a portable story. An honest story is at home in one, and only one, place and time. Limitation is vital. The first step toward a well-told story is to create a small, knowable world… The irony of setting verses story is this: the larger the world, the more diluted the knowledge of the writer, therefore the fewer his creative choices and the more clichéd the story. The smaller the world, the more complete the knowledge of the writer, therefore the greater his creative choices. Result: a fully original story and victory in the war on cliché.”

    Cliché and writer’s block happen when we’re stretched thin. When that happens, when we find ourselves ignorant, we either need to shrink our world or research to fill in the gaps. McKee again:

    “The key to winning this war is research, taking the time and effort to acquire knowledge. I suggest these specific methods: research of memory, research of imagination, research of facts. Generally, a story needs all three.

    1. For memory, Lean back from your desk and ask, “What do I know from personal experience that touches on my character’s lives?”

    2. For Imagination, lean back and ask, “What would it be like to live my character’s life hour by hour, day by day.”

    3. For fact: Have you ever had writer’s block? Scary, isn’t it? Days drag by and nothing gets written. Cleaning the garage looks like fun. You rearrange your desk over and over and over until you think you’re losing your mind. I know a cure, but it isn’t a trip to your psychiatrist. It’s a trip to the library. You’re blocked because you have nothing to say. Your talent didn’t abandon you. If you had something to say, you couldn’t stop yourself from writing. You can’t kill your talent, but you can starve it into a coma through ignorance. For no matter how talented, the ignorant cannot write. Talent must be stimulated by facts and ideas. Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliché, it’s the key to victory over fear and its cousin, depression.”

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    […] READ NEXT: Don’t Kill Your Darlings. Exile Them. […]

Quick note from Lance about this post: when you choose to comment (or share this post with your friends) you help other readers just like you.

How?

Well, see, your comments & sharing whisper a few things to those who come after you:

The first is that this site is a safe place to speak up & stay curious. That it's civil. That discussion is encouraged. That there's no such thing as a stupid question (being a student of Socrates, I really and truly believe this). That talking to one another and growing together is more important than anything we could possibly publish. That the point is growing in virtue and growing together and growing wise. That discovery is invention, deference is originality, that we all can rise together. The only folks I'm going to take comments down from are obvious jerks who argue in bad faith, don't stay curious, or actively make personal attacks. And, frankly, I'd rather we talk here than on some social media farm — I will never show ads and the only thing I'm selling anywhere on the site or my mailing list is just the stuff I make.

You're also helping folks realize that anything you & they build together is far more important than anything you come to me to read. I take the things I write about seriously, but I don't take myself seriously: I play the fool, I hate cults of personality, and I also don't really like being the center of attention (believe it or not). I would much rather folks connect because of an introduction I've made or because they commented with one another back and forth and then build something beautiful together. My favorite contributions have been lifelong business and love partnerships from two people who have forgotten I introduced them. Some of my closest friends NOW I literally met on another blog's comment section fifteen years ago. I would love for that to happen here — let two of you meet and let me fade into the background.

Last, you help me revise. I'm wrong. Often. I'm not embarrassed to admit it or worried about being cancelled or publicly shamed. I make a fool out of myself (that's sort of the point). So as I get feedback, I can say, "I was wrong about that" and set a model for curious, consistent learning, and growing in wisdom. I'm blind to what I don't know and as grows the island of my knowledge so grows the shoreline of my ignorance. It's the recovery of innocence on the far end of experience: a child is in a permanent state of wonder. So are the wise: they aren't afraid of saying, "I don't know. That's new: please teach me." That's my goal, comments help. And I read all reviews: my skin's tough, but that's not license to be needlessly cruel. We teach one another our habits and there's a way to civilly demolish an idea without demolishing another person: just because I personally can take the world's meanest 1-star review doesn't mean we should teach one another how to be crueler on the internet.

For three magical reasons — your brave curiosity, your community, & my ignorance:

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