Blank page syndrome

Hello, all.

Sorry for the radio silence, as it were, of the last few days. On Friday my broadband router gave up the ghost and I've been without Internet access since.

The withdrawal symptoms are as bad as you might imagine, but I'm feeling a lot better now, thank you.

Anyway, on with today's blog.

Many people ask me how, as a writer, I tackle the dreaded blank page; that virginal sheet of white paper or empty window on the computer screen which you then have to fill with words that make some sort of sense and hopefully even entertain.

Well, to be honest, partly because of how I plot and plan everything out meticulously before I start writing, I have never suffered from writer's block. (I now fully expect days of inactivity writing-wise having just jinxed myself!) However, others do, or find it hard to get started the day following a creative splurge.

Nick Kyme - Black Library editor and now author - has some suggestions of his own over at his blog. Serendipitously, he advocates a method that I myself have used for a long time; that of starting the next chapter, even if only in note form, when you've just finished one, before stopping work for the day.

Anyway, if you are at all interested in the mechanics, trials and tribulations of writing creatively, you should check out Nick's blog here.