How To Get Over Writer’s Block When Half Way Through Your Novel

My initial suggestion is this: write the first draft of your novel in a relatively short concentrated space of time. I suggest six weeks maximum. From my experience, you make yourself vulnerable to writer’s block if you take too long to complete that first draft. Easy to say so, you may respond; what if the writing of your novel must be fitted in around a full-time job? What if there are many interruptions, and it’s difficult to keep up the momentum of the writing?The only answer to that is if you care about writing your novel, you will find the time. You will prioritise and remove distractions from your life.
Writer’s block, from my own experience, is what happens when you lose passion and excitement and engagement with your characters.Suddenly you don’t care any more. Suddenly they no longer inspire you. I have come to realise there are a number of causes of this:
1) You have an erratic writing schedule, and you allow long spaces of time to elapse between writing sessions. The habit of discipline should train both mind and body; the mental powers of imagination, observation, research, and concentration, allied to the body that sits at the table or desk, the hand that holds the pen and writes, or taps the keys of the laptop.
2) You have not planned your novel beforehand. I can recommend designing your novel using Snowflake Pro, novel design software created by Randy Ingermanson, who has (with Peter Economy) also written an excellent book on Fiction Writing. If you follow this guidance, you stand a good chance of avoiding writer’s block. If you start by establishing structure, and move out to the details, then you are working from a stable position. It is like seeing the wood for the trees. If you know what your three Acts are, and you have already planned your major disasters: the first at the end of Act 1, the second in the middle of Act 2, and the third at the end of Act 2, then you will avoid what Ingermanson calls “the flabby middle”. This is the zone where you will encounter writer’s block, unless you have paid attention to structure.
3) A character is failing to live up to his promise. Then be bold and strike out and ask What if? and then go with whatever crazy idea first strikes you. Allow somebody new and unexpected to enter. Perhaps move your character to another setting, present the character with an unforeseen challenge.. Of course overproliferation of characters and locations is another danger. But this is your first draft. You can fix it later, can’t you? And it’s better than giving in to writer’s block.
4) The heart and soul have gone out of your novel. You’ve designed your story, listed all your scenes, you’ve deleted some and moved others around, and you read through again and suddenly you realise the novel has become vacuous and empty. You deleted scenes you shouldn’t have. Writer’s block can strike then too. But it needn’t. Perhaps take a break from the writing, go out for a long walk or visit an art gallery or do something completely different that doesn’t involve words, then come back to it afresh. Read through your scene list again and then the your intuition may once again start to piece things together, make sense of it all.
5) Your novel really isn’t working. There’s nothing you can do to rescue it. If this is the case for you, then put it out of its misery, let it go, rest awhile and then start to construct a new one. Never give up. Carry on writing. Your next novel is just around the corner.