MakingOf: Interview with John August (Part 2)

H/T to Josh James for posting this on Facebook (where I saw it): The second part of an interview with screenwriter John August on the very cool website Making Of.

[I posted the first part of the MakingOf interview here].

August links to the MakingOf interview here on his blog with commentary. Pay special attention to this part of the interview:

3:30 Writer’s block

You know who gets writer’s block? Non-writers. They think it’s cool and romantic to struggle to make Art. They make sure everyone knows how torturous the process is, so when they finally squeeze something out, it won’t be judged on its merits but rather the emotional anguish involved in its creation.

Writers write. Hacks Posers whine about how hard it is.

John uses the word “hacks” in the interview, which he amends — with an explanation — on his blog. But don’t look past the subtext: I think John, like most working writers, gets a bit tired of people whining about being stuck — when in fact, as John suggests, “Usually writer’s block is one of two things: Either I just don’t want to write that next scene or I really haven’t figured out what the heck’s going to happen next.”

Writers face obstacles all the time. The difference between a serious writer and a poser is the serious writer will find a way around the obstacle, not let it become the excuse to stop writing.

Yes, some times we can get really and royally blocked. I’ve read interviews with songwriters where they’ve confessed they didn’t — or couldn’t — write a song for an extended period of time. That’s one thing.

But if we hit an obstacle in a story we’re writing and we let that stop us — that’s not writer’s block, that’s ceding our power to the obstacle.

If you need some advice on how to proceed when you face a story obstacle, here’s a Dumb Little Writing Trick That Works.