What if you have trouble simply getting off the starting block?

Writer's block is the number-one cliché of writing. It's an easy excuse—tossed out readily over and over and over again. Like tennis balls to an enthusiastic Golden Retriever.

I don't believe in writer's block. “My father never got truck driver's block,” as the journalist Roger Simon has said.¹

A house framer isn't daunted by the pile of two-by-fours. A dog walker isn't intimidated by a leash. My accountant isn't paralyzed by QuickBooks.

More often than not, so-called writer's block is rooted in fear and anxiety about knowing where to start. I get that because I procrastinate, too.

Sometimes our stalling is based in fear. Or anxiety. Or flat-out laziness. Whatever the reason, fear and anxiety can stop us from writing before we even place a single pixel on a page.

So I might not believe in writer's block, but I do believe in writer's evasion. I believe in writer's dawdle and writer's procrastination and writer's I-wonder-if-there's-any-donuts-left-I-should-go-check-right-now.

Procrastination looks a lot like avoidance. But it isn't. It's part of the process. (We talked about this in Chapter 13.)

The Writing GPS helps spark the start. But at some point you just have to start writing. You need to leash up the dog. And go.

Writer John McPhee suggests the trick of typing Dear Mother to neuter the fear of the blank page. You might adapt it to Hello Dad, Hi hon, or Hey you.

Later you can think of your actual reader—your Petunia—and not a nameless, faceless “market segment” or “persona” (Chapter 10.). But for now, just think of someone who loves you, warts and all. Someone who doesn't judge you.

It'll relax your claws on the keyboard.

And it'll uncoil your writing voice into sounding natural, loose, and friendly.