How I helped a client go from stuck to 50,000 words

Three weeks ago, I was sitting across from Sarah at a coffee shop in downtown Kitchener, watching her fidget with her notebook while explaining why she hadn't written a single word in six months. She had this incredible urban fantasy concept—think John Wick meets The Dresden Files for a good idea—but every time she sat down to write, she'd end up reorganizing her research notes or suddenly deciding her character's backstory needed another complete overhaul.

Sound familiar?

The thing is, Sarah isn't lazy. She's not untalented. She's not even particularly procrastination-prone in other areas of her life. She manages a team of twelve people at a tech company, renovated her entire kitchen last year, and somehow finds time to train for half-marathons. But when it came to her novel, she was completely paralyzed.

As it turns out, the problem wasn't what she thought it was.

The Real Reason Writers Get Stuck

Most writing advice will tell you that writer's block comes from perfectionism, or fear of failure, or not having a detailed enough outline. And sure, sometimes that's true. But in Sarah's case—and honestly, in like 80% of the cases I see—the issue was something entirely different: she was trying to write her second book first.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Sarah had this vision of her finished novel. She could see the clever dialogue, the intricate world-building, the perfectly-paced action sequences. She knew exactly how good she wanted it to be. The problem? She was expecting her first draft to match that vision.

It's like expecting to deadlift 400 pounds on your first day at the gym because you can picture yourself doing it clearly. The vision is important, but it can become a prison if you don't understand where you actually are in the process.

By the time you’ve moved through the drafts and redrafts, the different versions of the same characters, everything over and over and over — it’s an entirely new book than what you started out with. Your first book died somewhere in the metamorphosis, and the copy you hold in your hands is the second version.

The Conversation That Changed Everything

"What's the worst thing that could happen if you wrote a terrible first chapter?" I asked her.

Sarah looked at me like I'd suggested she set her laptop on fire. "It would be... terrible?"

"And then what?"

"I'd have to rewrite it."

"How many times do you think Stephen King rewrote the opening of The Stand?"

She didn't know. Neither did I, to be honest with you, but I’m pretty sure it wasn't once.

That's when I saw it on her face that something clicked for her. The goal wasn't to write a perfect first draft—it was to write a first draft. The perfectness could come later, in the second draft, the third draft, the draft-that-finally-doesn't-make-her-cringe-when-she-reads-it-six-months-later.

The Framework That Unlocked 50,000 Words

Here's the system we developed together, which I've now started calling the "Archaeology Method" (because you're essentially excavating the story that already exists, rather than building it from scratch):

Week 1: Permission to Suck Sarah's only job was to write 500 words per day. Not good words. Not polished words. Just words. I told her to imagine she was writing a letter to her best friend, describing the story rather than writing the actual story.

The difference is crucial. When you're describing something, you're naturally more casual, more exploratory. You might say, "So then Marcus realizes his mentor has been lying to him this whole time, which is wild because..." instead of trying to craft the perfect scene where Marcus discovers the betrayal.

Week 2: The Archaeological Dig Now that she had roughly 3,500 words of story-description, we went mining for the good stuff. Which scenes actually excited her when she wrote them? Which characters felt most alive? Where did her natural voice start to emerge?

This is where the magic happened. Sarah discovered that her action sequences were actually pretty solid, but her dialogue needed work. She realized her world-building was clearer when she focused on how it felt to be in those spaces rather than meticulously describing every architectural detail.

Week 3-4: Building on Solid Ground Armed with this self-knowledge, Sarah started writing actual scenes. But here's the key: she was building on top of what she'd already discovered about her story and her strengths. She wasn't starting from scratch anymore.

By week four, she was consistently hitting 1200-1500 words per day. Not because she'd suddenly become a faster writer, but because she finally knew what she was trying to say.

The Mindset Shift That Made All the Difference

The breakthrough moment came when Sarah stopped thinking about writing as "creating something from nothing" and started thinking about it as "discovering something that already exists."

Her story was already there, waiting to be found. Her job wasn't to invent it—it was to uncover it.

This might sound like semantic word-play, but I swear the psychological difference is enormous. When you're trying to create something perfect, every word feels precious and permanent. When you're exploring and discovering, you can be curious instead of precious. You can ask "what if?" instead of demanding "this must be exactly right."

What About the Research Rabbit Holes?

Don't worry, we didn't ignore Sarah's tendency to disappear into research for hours at a time. Instead, we turned it into a feature rather than a bug.

Every time she felt the urge to research something, she'd write "[RESEARCH: How do police investigations actually work?]" and keep writing. Then, once a week, she'd spend a dedicated research session tracking down all those bracketed questions.

This way, she got to scratch the research itch without derailing her writing momentum. Plus, she often discovered that half the things she thought she needed to research weren't actually important to the story.

The Results (And What Surprised Me)

Sarah hit 50,000 words in about seven weeks. But more importantly, she enjoyed those seven weeks. She started looking forward to her writing time instead of dreading it.

The quality? Honestly, better than most first drafts I see. Not because Sarah is some secret prodigy, but because she was writing with confidence and curiosity instead of anxiety and perfectionism.

The most surprising part for me was how much her dialogue improved once she stopped trying to make it sound "literary." When she gave herself permission to write conversations the way people actually talk, her characters became infinitely more believable.

The Thing I'm Still Learning

Here's what I'll admit: I'm still figuring out how to teach this mindset shift more efficiently. Some writers get it immediately. Others take months to internalize the idea that their first draft is supposed to be exploratory rather than definitive.

I think it has something to do with how we're taught to write in school—where the goal is usually to produce something polished and "correct" on the first try. That might work for essays, but it's poison for creative writing.

Your Turn

If you're stuck like Sarah was, try this: set a timer for fifteen minutes and write a letter to your best friend describing your story. Don't worry about scene structure or perfect prose. Just tell them what happens, why you think it's interesting, and what you're excited about.

I bet you'll surprise yourself with how much you actually know about your story, and how much easier it is to access that knowledge when you're not trying to be perfect.

Sometimes the best way forward isn't to push harder—it's to change direction entirely.

What story have you been trying to excavate?