I'm a huge believer that there is no such thing as writer's block. Any sort of delay or difficulty, whatever name you give it, is only fear in some shape or other.

A smart writer -- meaning one who is dedicated to the craft, who is open to criticism and who considers himself a perpetual student --  must develop a blind trust in the powers of the calm brain. Any task that is set before us will always seem more difficult to some degree when we think about it away from pen or keyboard. Conversely, any challenge we face will always become easier during the act of writing.

At midnight yesterday, I received my prompt for Round 2 of the NYC Midnight contest about which I've been blogging for the last couple months: Drama / A Pier / A putter (a golf club). As is my normal procedure, I laced up my walking shoes and pounded the pavement, confident the juices would flow and deliver me a terrific start to a story.  An hour and a half later, I had ideas but not the one, good, big idea I needed to get started with confidence. At least that seed wasn't waving its hand to be recognized.

No one likes walking into the dark unfamiliar and I am no exception -- of course, ironically, I do walk late at night on familiar streets, as I've mentioned. I headed to the local coffee shop this morning with nothing more than crumbs in my virtual bag when what I wanted, felt I needed, was a whole muffin of a story idea. So what did I do?

I opened up Pages (Mac word processor) and I wrote. That's it. I wrote. I got my character stoned between the fifth and sixth holes on a disk golf course and turned the screws on him. That's what he gets for hiding, right? There's something about vomiting ideas into some visual form. Write it. Type it. As long as your fingers are engaged, you're on the right path. Yes, you'll be crapping crappy crap for a while, but something magical happens if you just let go. And thinking is for the birds. Some amount of it is necessary. I did some nasty thinking when the prompt came in. Confession: I didn't know exactly what made drama...drama. I searched for good definitions and examples so my mind would know where to go to dream, but that was pretty much the extent of it.

So consider this my trademarked writing law:

Writing success is directly proportional to the degree of activity in our fingers and the degree of stillness in our mind.

Said in a way that fits nicely onto a bumper sticker:

It all comes out in the writing.

Reading all of this, you might think I'm contradicting things I've written about writing in previous posts, that I sound like I'm writing by the seat of my pants. I guess that does require some clarification.

First off, I don't argue against seat of the pants writing. Nor do I argue against careful planning. But if you're facing a situation where you must sit and write, I'm arguing that you can ALWAYS do it. There is no wasted time and there is no wrong direction (provided you know the basic definitions required for the task at hand, such as my need to have the elements of drama better defined).

Especially for longer works, careful planning is necessary. It has been said that short stories, moreso than novel-length works, require it. Flash pieces -- especially flash pieces with a two-day deadline --  calls for a different process. But even in the careful planning stages I mention, there is a temptation to rub our foreheads, to dawdle and tell ourselves we're anguishing, squeezing out the good stuff.

Trust me when I say the good stuff only shows up when you're recording actual words, be they story, outline, synopsis or notes.