Writer’s Block — A Writer’s Dark Passenger

How to make that negative voice in your head work for you instead of against you

Dexter is a serial killer. And within him, he carries what he calls “a dark passenger”.

I’m not sure what I am. I just know there’s something dark in me. I hide it. I certainly don’t talk about it, but it’s there always, this Dark Passenger. And when he’s driving, I feel alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness. I don’t fight him, I don’t want to. He’s all I’ve got. — Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

When you write, is there a dark passenger within you that makes you feel alive and unstoppable? When he’s riding with you, do the words flow as new ideas unfurl. It’s a wonderful experience that, like Dexter says, “I don’t fight him, I don’t want to. He’s all I’ve got”.

And when you dark passenger abandons you, do you hear silence and feel incapable of writing as the words and ideas abandon you?

Without my dark passenger, I’m left with nothing but writer’s block and a blank page. It’s terrible and I feel alone.

Dexter is a fictional character that is morbidly fascinating. It’s the dark story of a killer trying to come to terms with his compulsion.

When I write, I yearn for my dark passenger to ride with me. I long for it to compel me to put down my thoughts, dreams, and nightmares as effortlessly as a sharp knife slices through butter.

And when my dark passenger chooses to hide and leave me to my own devices, the words come with great effort and ideas are evasive. I don’t feel the rush of excitement. And I ask myself if the rider will ever be with me again.

Have you ever felt that way?

But there are tricks that will draw out our dark passenger.

Just write

“Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.”― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Before I started writing this piece, I spent a couple of hours just thinking about writing. I asked myself what would be a good topic that would help people? I did my normal research to find the one idea that could launch a story.

Nothing worked. My dark passenger was hiding and he would not come out.

And as I sat looking at a blank screen, my rider whispered to me, “you can’t write because you have writer’s block”. And at that moment, I knew what I needed to write about.

I needed to write about writer’s block.

With a deep breath or relief, I reached for the keyboard. My dark passenger was back.

Tip: If you start writing, your rider won’t be able to resist sitting down beside you and inspiring you. So the biggest step to end writer’s block is to just write. Write something, write anything. And within moments you’ll receive inspiration about a story that demands you write it.

Write two paragraphs then throw out the first

When I was a kid, I lived part of my youth on my grandparent's farm. On the property was an old well that could still draw water even though it hadn’t been used for years. I was curious about it. So one day I asked my grandfather how it worked. He took me over and told me to start pumping the handle. It seemed like I pumped for hours, but eventually, there came a trickle of water, and then the water flowed.

I learned that to get water from the well it had to be primed. It takes work, but if there is water available, the pumping action will bring it up every time, guaranteed.

Tip: Think of your first paragraph as priming the well. The water (your dark passenger) doesn’t have a choice about coming to the surface as long as you keep pumping. And just like the water that is hand-pumped from a well, the first water isn’t good. Give it a few more pumps and the water will be clean. So write your first and second paragraphs and keep on writing as the ideas flow like water until you reach the end. Then go back and reread your first two paragraphs. Most often you’ll find your story really starts in the second paragraph. The first paragraph was you priming your story’s well.

Put on some music

My dark passenger enjoys music. Neither brain-busting, heavy metal, hard rock nor put you to sleep easy listening to music works for me. What my rider and I like is the blues.

Tip: Try all types of music to discover what worked best for you. What you want is music that frees your mind of distracting noise. When you feel writer’s block, put on some music and wait for the muse to come to you.

Make writing a scheduled event

Writing is work so it has to be a priority.

If you work during the day, you’ll have to write at night. Or you may be lucky enough to be retired so you can write anytime.

So whether you work or not, procrastination is the enemy.

One of my dark passenger’s skills is to tell me to do something, anything, else except write. Think about the last time you thought about writing but didn’t get to it. What held you back. Was it the garbage that had set by the back door all day but now that it’s was time to write, you had to take it out? Or was it a TV show, a quick trip to the grocery store, or doing research?

Talk to writers and they can give you a list of things that keeps them from away from writing.

Tip: Set up a recurring schedule on your phone. But set it to go off 30 minutes before your writing time. This way you can get all of the last minute things done ahead of your writing time. Also, tell your family that in a half-hour you will be writing so if they need something from you ask now.

Write down 10 new ideas daily

Keep a note pad by your bed so that when you wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea, you can write it down. If you don’t write down your ideas, they’ll be gone from you in the morning.

Ideas occur to all of us throughout the day. But as quickly as they come to us, they flitter away and are forgotten unless we write them down.

The problem with what to write about isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s not writing our thoughts down that leaves us feeling empty when we sit down to write.

Tip: Having a note pad in your car and beside your favorite chair makes it easy to jot down an idea or title for a future story.

I began this story talking about Dexter and his dark passenger. And I wrote about how writers also have their own rider that can be compulsive, unpredictable, and finicky.

The trick is learning how to take your dark passenger and turn it into a rider who doles out great ideas along the writing trip.

Learn to listen to your dark passenger and you’ll be churning out great stories as often as you want.

Dexter said it best:

I don’t fight him, I don’t want to. He’s all I’ve got. — Dexter Morgan