One of the biggest complaints from beginning writers – apart from “where are my groupies?” – is “I don’t know how to start my story.” This unforgiving reality is akin to the terrifying “what do my characters do next?” and “I’m out of beer, and my fingers can still find the right keys. I’d better go to the store.” These are all forms of Writer’s Block, that dark place that lurks in the periphery of a writer’s workspace. It’s the evil that keeps words off the page.

Sucks, huh?

I’m not going to lie to you. Every writer has this dark place. No exceptions. However, what separates the Author (ones who push through Writer’s Block to finish their story), and the Writer (ones who don’t) is that much like that leaky faucet in the bathroom, the Author has learned to live with it. Or, better yet, he’s learned to fix it.

I’m one of those who has learned to fix Writer’s Block (most of the time). Yep, fixed it myself, and I’ll tell you how in exactly nine paragraphs.

First, let’s look at the different types of Writer’s Block. None is easier to overcome than the next, nor harder. Writer’s Blocks come in many forms, and they’re all complete dicks.

How do I start? There’s an idea. A great idea rolling around in that big noggin of yours. It may have just appeared. It may have been spinning recklessly downhill for years, gaining momentum (I had a character inside my head for twenty years before I finally let him out. He became the protagonist in my first novel). It doesn’t matter how long the idea’s been there, the problem is it doesn’t want to come out.

Sometimes starting a novel or short story is easy. The protagonist kills dragons. Okay, so start your story with the protagonist killing a dragon. None of this mucking around with him waking up in the morning to fix coffee. Get to the action. In my first novel, “A Funeral Story,” the character Deever Dickson (the one with the twenty-year incubation period) has sex with strange women he meets at funerals, so in Chapter One, bingo, he has sex with a strange woman at her Dad’s funeral. (It’s less awkward than it sounds. Okay. No, it isn’t.) The point is, get to the Point.

How do I start? Part 2. Every writer has a ritual. When I first started, my ritual was to write like mad, then whenever I felt like writing again I’d read what I’d written before, edit it, and by the time I finished, I didn’t feel like writing anymore. Oh, sometimes my favorite TV program was about to come on, or I had to use the bathroom, but the result was the same. After my first manic session of pounding words onto a page, I was stuck. I eventually had four 10,000-plus-word novel intros in my top desk drawer, and I no longer had interest in pursuing any of them. Fortunately, I realized something had to change. (How to defeat Writer’s Block coming in five paragraphs.)

What do I do now? In the middle of a story – a good story, a worthwhile story, a story you may actually finish – a chasm opens, and the protagonist just stands there. Not because he can’t fall into the chasm. Not because he can’t grab that dangling vine. Not because he can’t pull himself up to safety, gripping the president’s nuclear football in his teeth, and saving the world from annihilation. It’s because you have no idea what he’s going to do. Characters develop a life of their own, and tend to do things you never planned. (That’s kind of scary. I’m sure most writers should be locked away for their own safety. Me included.) But sometimes even your most well developed character just won’t do anything. Nope. Not a damn thing.

So, what now?

If you’re an outliner (I’m not), this may not be a big problem. But for those organic writers, a good shake up might be in order. In an interview, Stephen King said he got stuck like this while writing “The Stand.” He resolved his problem by killing some of the main characters. It worked. “The Stand” is one of my favorite King novels. It’s also a good thing he writes fiction. I suspect people frown on this method in non-fiction.

Okay, so we’re nearly to the paragraph I promised. The paragraph where I tell you how to cure Writer’s Block. It’s a lot simpler than it sounds. It’s as Pavlovian as it gets, baby.

Writing is simply a habit – get into it. When I could no longer put off the fact that writing was something I had to do, I made a writing space. I went to that space at the same time every day (every day), had the same lighting, the same chair, the same beverage, the same background noise, the same sameness. Eventually when I sat at the same space, in the same chair, at the same time, my head knew we were writing. And you know what? It works. I haven’t had true Writer’s Block in at least eight years.

So, fellow Writers, give that a shot. And if your character still can’t move away from the side of that chasm, send a sidekick flying over the edge, or maybe a love interest, or both. It couldn’t hurt.