Sometimes, you just need to write

So, as you all know, I have set myself several goals. Write every day, even if it’s only a few hundred words. Submit at least once a week. Write a blog post every weekday.

Well, today, I realized that I almost missed out on that last one, and now I find myself sitting in front of the computer, trying to come up with something to blog about. And I reminded myself of on of the most important rules to writing that I know.

Sometimes, you just have to write.

We’ve all been there. Stuck for an idea on what to do next. Our hero is trapped, and we have no idea how to get him out of it. The villain is giving a speech, but the words for it just aren’t coming. There’s a pending blog post, but no topic.

But, despite the fact that inspiration has fled and the ideas are just not coming, you still have to write. Because, no one else is going to write your story but you. So, we write. I am sitting here now, writing this, because I couldn’t think of anything else to write about tonight.

We don’t know how the hero will escape the villainous death trap, so we leave him there in a cliffhanger and move to another character until an idea comes to us. Instead of writing out the villain’s speech, we have the hero working away at his bonds and sneaking out his cell phone that he will use to transmit a virus into the villain’s super computer. As he’s not listening to the speech, it’s just going on in the background, and the hero focus on the task at hand.

There are ways around not knowing what to write next. Usually, for me, it’s to skip ahead, or back or sideways even, and write something else.

And the reason for this is that, if I want to be a professional writer, if I want to make money doing this, I can’t let something as fragile as inspiration, or it’s lack, stop me from doing what I want to do with my life. Writing is just too important to me to be stopped by something as simple as “I don’t know what to write.”

So, don’t let the lack of idea blues get you down. Get back at that keyboard, skip to another scene, find a way out of writing that part you don’t want, and get the story going.

Because, sometimes, no matter what, you just have to write.