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Media Relations

Writer's block? These writing tips will inspire you

Waiting for inspiration to strike you before you take on that blank page on your computer screen? Don't waste your time. While there are moments of inspiration, most writers will tell you that in order to develop creative writing skills you need to get in a habit of writing regularly.

"Good writing comes out of practice more than it comes out of inspiration," says Samrat Upadhyay, a writer and professor of creative writing at Indiana University Bloomington. "The more you write, the more you get into the practice of writing and the more you will find that inspiration will come."

Indiana University writing experts share their thoughts on how to be the best writer possible.

Keep a journal or a notebook

A good way to practice daily writing is by keeping a journal or a notebook, not a diary or a log of daily activities, but a place where you can record your observations of people and places, thoughts and reflections on the world around you.

"The notebook or a journal is a place where you're not only storing materials, but you are also training yourself to turn experience into language," says Scott Sanders, a writer and IU professor.

Sanders also suggests copying out passages from the readings you find particularly impressive or words that interest you. You can also use a journal to jot down ideas for stories or poems.

Writer and IU School of Journalism Professor Carol Polsgrove says, "Journals are where writers' minds are moving freely and spontaneously. Keeping a journal gets you writing and responding to the world as a writer. Writers, fiction or memoir writers, will generate ideas from the materials in the journal."

Read a lot and study other writers

Read a lot, read broadly and study other writers. Read the highest quality writing you can lay your hands on and try not to limit your reading list to the genre you aspire to write in. By reading good literature, including classics, history, biographies and cultural commentary, you will learn how language should sound on the page.

"When I first talk to people who want to write, I tell them to read. That may seem obvious, but it can't be emphasized enough that all writers begin as readers," says Sanders.

While reading a wide range of literature, Upadhyay suggests keeping an open mind -- don't decide right away whether you like the reading or not -- embrace and discover. Study other writers' successful techniques; maybe even transcribe your favorite passages in your journal. For example, study how Ernest Hemingway uses dialogue to build his characters.

Get together with other writers

Find people who are at the same skill level as you are and read and critique each other's work. It is easy to do that in academia, where you can take creative writing courses, but there are other places where you can find a group of writers -- public libraries, workshops organized by some colleges and writers' conferences. For example, IU offers a week-long writers' conference in June each year. The conference provides a stimulating atmosphere, where you can develop your skills by working with teachers and meeting with other writers.

"There is a kind of energy that passes when you are with a group of writers. And you know that you are all there for the same purpose -- to develop as a writer. You can look at each other's work and comment on it -- what's been done well and what's not been done well," says Upadhyay.

At the same time, be careful about whom you show your work to -- not all people are good editors. Polsgrove warns about "showing your work to other people prematurely."

"Sometimes, your work is not ready to be shown and your feelings will be hurt if your wife or husband, or your boyfriend, or your mother doesn't like what you've done. Protect your work until you feel that it is really done and then show it to somebody you believe will be a good editor for you, a good expert reader," says Polsgrove.

Don't rely on formulas

Creative writing is not "formulaic." While other types of writing, including much of journalism, scholarly work and bureaucratic writing, have a "formula," creative writing gives you more freedom to use your imagination and develop your own, distinctive voice.

"Creative writing is writing out of your personal sensibility and taking risks. When people read it, they know it was written by you and not by someone else," says Polsgrove.

In order to develop an interesting personal voice, Polsgrove suggests, by referring to Socrates, "to examine your own life. You don't have to write about your own experience. You have to have a fairly lively intellectual life [and] respect the life of the mind to write history." The same is true about any kind of writing, including creative writing, she says.

Prose from the pros

Polsgrove, Sanders and Upadhyay share their own approach and writing rituals:

• "I write history. So, I do a lot of research before I write. I write only when my mind is fresh. I like to write early in the morning and when I'm going to be undisturbed by anybody and can be very concentrated," says Polsgrove.
• "In early stages, I do a lot of note-making, without judging the value of these notes. It's a completely open, uncensored process. Then I write the first draft very slowly, revising as I go. I let the draft sit for a week or two, or even longer, and then go back to it and carefully revise until I have it in the best shape," Sanders explains.
• "I do not plot my work. I don't even plot out my novel. For me, part of the pleasure of writing is not knowing where I'm going and to discover. Even for plot-driven writers, it may not be a bad idea to start out without a plot in the first draft," says Upadhyay.

The 'nitty-gritty' for good fiction from Upadhyay:

• A well-articulated conflict. "No one wants to read a story, in which everything is perfectly fine."
• Character. What does your character want? What are his/her motivations? "Don't create a talking-head character, who sits in his apartment and is merely talking or philosophizing about life."
• Action. What happens next? "The reader needs to be flipping pages. Will the character get what she wants? Keep the reader guessing."
• Scenes. Use them to show the action as the action is unfolding.
• Senses -- sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. "If you don't have these, you haven't invited the reader to participate in the world you have created on the page."
• Clarity. "Often beginning writers confuse ambiguity with complexity. Clarity doesn't mean simplicity. Treat your reader as an intelligent, respectable being who deserves to enjoy your writing, instead of being confounded by it."

As for books, apart from reading great writers in history to learn from their techniques, Upadhyay suggests aspiring writers to check out the following books:

• Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway
• What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.

Recent publications to examine:

• Polsgrove: Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement (W.W. Norton, 2001)
• Sanders: A Private History of Awe, a novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).
• Upadhyay: The Guru of Love, a novel (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) and The Royal Ghosts, a story collection (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

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