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Treat writing like plumbing
Getting stuck is the daily test of that. The answer is to keep staring at the page until your ears start to bleed, rather than declaring that you are stuck and going shopping or watching TV. A walk, or anything else that stimulates the mind, can help.
A lot of writer's block is the same as not wanting to go to the gym that day. The only fix is to make yourself go. For Harlan Coben, skipping the work raises one question: if he doesn't write, he isn't a writer, so what is he?
He sees the same attitude in every person who produces pages, from the most literary writer to the most commercial romance writer. They treat it as a job that has to be done.
Does walking really help creative thinking?
Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz at Stanford reported in 2014 that people generated about 60 percent more creative uses for everyday objects while walking than while sitting. The boost lingered shortly after the walk ended. The study appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. The effect held on a treadmill facing a blank wall as well as outdoors.
How do writers keep a daily word quota?
Biographer Norman Sherry recorded that Graham Greene kept to about 500 words a day and tallied them in a notebook. Greene published more than 25 novels on that pace.
Why does an unfinished task nag at us?
Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik reported in 1927 that people recalled interrupted tasks better than completed ones. The finding became known as the Zeigarnik effect. Later studies have had mixed results in reproducing it.
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