it allows your subconscious to work on the issue, and you can come back to it fresh later on. 3. Focus on the reader: John Steinbeck said it best: “Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person — a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.” 4. Context switching: This has helped me before—I will change where I am writing. I’ll go to a coffee shop or a restaurant or any- where else. It doesn’t matter, I just change the context I am in. 5. Keep writing: I hate this, but sometimes it works. Many times I’ve been stuck, and I would keep writing, even if it was useless, and that got me going. Lack of momentum almost always has fear underneath it, but sometimes just getting moving is enough to get to something good. These are the strategies I’ve seen work for myself and others. But again, do what works for you. That’s the only rule for writing. hOW DO yOU BEAT WriTEr’S BlOCk? · 435