Busting through writer's block

Does writing about writer's block count as having overcome my own writer's block?

I haven't written properly for ages, for a variety of reasons. I like to say it's because "I'm busy", but I'm no busier than anyone else who works full time, and other people somehow manage to hammer out a few words on the side.

So here, borrowed and expanded from About.com's article on writer's block, are some tips as much for my benefit as yours. Tips to get writing again.

1. Have a schedule

It's easier to stick to a diet if you have set mealtimes, and exercise is easier if you carve out a routine of hitting the gym at the same time every day. Similarly, try getting up fifteen minutes earlier and writing something, anything, just to get into the habit of doing it. We're all in a rut - it's just that some ruts are healthier than others.

2. Stop beating yourself up

It can be hard to move onto the second chapter if the first is a shambles. The second verse won't come if the first still doesn't scan, the second sentence is dependant on the first and the first is just. Not. Right. Yet...

Stop it.

The point of the first draft is to get words on paper (or zeroes and ones on the hard drive). They don't have to be great words, even good words, but they do have to be words. You can't improve what doesn't exist. Ego - the need to create something you'd be proud to show someone else - really shouldn't be sitting in on the first draft. I tend to produce first drafts which are also final drafts, which is a bad habit going back to primary school. But I got over other bad primary school habits (like crying in public and tucking my t-shirt into my undies) so it's time to pony up and get over this one too.

3. Treat writing as a job, not a dalliance

Part of the joy of pursuing writing - or painting or dance or music - as a hobby is that wonderful romantic image of the Artist as a wistful, otherworldly figure drifting blissfully across the Arcadian fields, a lily held in their delicate hand, great works wafting from their pen as effortlessly as a summer breeze.

Bad news, sunshine. You're not Oscar Wilde. You're not even Stephen Fry (except in the unlikely event that you are, in which case hello Mr Fry, love your work.)

The same way accomplished dancers and musicians make it look effortless when it's actually a bloody hard slog, accomplished writers only got that way through hard work and practice. Damn.

4. Don't force it - take a breather between projects

If you've just finished something (or, heartbreakingly, decided something you've started is a Lost Cause and binned it) take a break and recharge before you launch straight into the next Big Thing. In The Artist's Way (a book I simultaneously love and loathe) Julia Cameron describes our inspiration as a well, which should not be drained to the last drop but gently maintained and tended, restocked as well as drawn upon. Go easy on your well.

4a. Skip between projects

On the other hand, if you're working on the next Lord of the Rings, it might pay to have a break and write some silly limericks or a bit of mindless fanfic. Do something to get your mind off the big, main project, exercise different parts of your brain and help your mind stretch bits that aren't getting used in the course of the epic trek to Mordor. In other news, if you're working on the next Lord of the Rings, bad news. It's been done.

5. Deadlines

A journalist friend of mine can successfully set her own deadlines - tell herself all her calls have to be made by 3pm so she can have interviews done and be home by 5pm. But I personally can't keep deadlines if it's only myself I'm letting down. I can barely even stick to deadlines imposed externally - more than once I've exploited time zone differences to get stories in to The Doctor Who Project at the last possible moment. So maybe I need to recruit a friend to be my deadline-keeper.

6. Contemplate your navel

Is there some bigger reason your writing's ground to a halt? Are you writing about something that's personally difficult? Writing's good therapy, but if you're spinning your wheels maybe it's time to back off and take a different tack.

Or maybe you genuinely are busy with work, small children, ill parents, divorce, neighbourhood disputes and a cat that craps on the carpet. In that case, you can be excused for writing nothing but hit lists.

7. Suss out your writing space

If your writing place is a physically unconfortable place to be, you're not going to want to be there. Invest in a new lamp, a better chair, shift the furniture around, clean the crap off the desk so you have room for your teacup. There's a reason Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was written in cosy cafes rather than JK Rowling's lonely flat.

8. Try some writing exercises

Everything you write sound the same? Get out of your rut. Write a sonnet. Write in second person. Write fan fiction. Write from the perspective of a person of a different sex, ethnicity, nationality, political persuasion. Try some of these.

9. Why am I doing this again?

Remind yourself why you love to write. Reread the books that moved you as a child - The Secret Garden and the Chronicles of Narnia first demonstrated to me how words are keys to other worlds. Don't get too hung up on getting a positive note from the judgesof the local writing club's competition. It is, after all, judged by the sort of people who volunteer to judge writing competitions and are therefore either retired English teachers only interested in formal tense agreement or old men who write longwinded Letters to the Editor.

Forget about that crowd. Forget about pleasing the committee or your Mum or the inner critic in your head. Just write.