Writers Block

9 posts / 0 new
Last post
Writers Block

So I love to write, I have since I was very little, probably around the age of seven. I made it a goal to write at least 3 times a week, considering I'm in school and very busy. Normally I'm decently satistfied with my writing but lately everything I write sounds so scripted or fake. I don't know maybe I'm just being hard on myself. Any tips?

Just write what you feel. There are no hard and fast rules, just type it in and see where  it leads you. You've got talent without a doubt. Try different styles. Read more and see what you like and makes sense to you.

But...... enjoy it.......

 

Write what you feel is definately a good point but if that doesn't work for you what I've done is take up something I've learned from the movie "The King's Speech" without giving away any spoilers, I open up 2 word documents.  One being my story and the second being my personal comments.  When I get stuck with writers block I go into the personal comments and just expell anything that comes to mind... to put it politely.  If I'm frustrated I rant, if I'm confused I try to work out what I want to say or where I want the scene to go and the end result I'm looking to achieve.  Sometimes I'll cut past a scene with a sentence "Then he did some stuff" and go past it until I feel up to doing some editing.  

Just some things that work for me, hopefully they work for you as well. 

I really like this idea. Typically, I've just written everything all in one document and it becomes all jumbled and then I have to sort through it again to find all the good useable content. But I see the advantages of having two documents like that. I'll give it a whirl next time. Thanks for the tip.

It sounds cliche, but I've honestly found that going outside and walking/jogging and just looking at nature for about 30 minutes is the most helpful thing. You'll find many stories in nature, and you can exchange plants and animals for characters and stories. Plus it gets your blood flowing!

Jolono is bang on there :)

I usually only write when I have fuel. Sadly for me fuel means music, and by proxy, emotion. Double edged sword but then I did develop tons of material off one newly discovered piece of music the other day.

Get yourself fired up, feel things, that's where this all comes from right?

 

Excercise every time for me. Whenever I have writers block or I'm stuck on a crossword clue or I've misplaced something, a few minutes excercise works wonders. It gets oxygen into the brain, blows away the cobwebs and gets things moving again.
Chewing gum and drinking water can also work. (The brain is mostly water - so dehydration isn't good for it.)

Likewise if you have an exam or test of some kind - don't go into it 'stagnant.'
A quick burst of excercise beforehand and those answers come a little easier.

As you were still in school when you wrote this post I will take it you are still under 18, which rules out one of the best ways I find for getting over writer's block and that is a bottle of wine.

On a more mundane level, going out to a coffee house and sitting and earwigging on other people and their mundane day to day affairs can be very illuminating, or just watching other people.  Or take the, what if I saw someone do 'whatever' and put it into a different context, two people loading a heavy bag into the back of a car, is it a dead body?  I once saw a person come out of a door, followed a couple of minutes later by the same person coming out again, the simple answer was the mundane there was another door out of sight which the person had gone back in, but my take was the 2nd person was the first's double and impersonating the first to get money illegally from a bank? 

Observe the world and the ideas will come.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes, Juvenal, "Who will guard the guardians" 

For me, it's distance. I get completely consumed with my work until it's done, and then I burn myself out making endless revisions. In the end I can't even see spelling mistakes because my brain copy/pastes entire paragraphs into my memory believing it's perfect, at which point I've gone completely snowblind and then I question everything!

When I'm working, it's all day, every day. I fall asleep thinking about the story, and the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning is the story. After a week of this, I'm so far down the rabbit hole you couldn't find me with a flashlight.

As Ashcan suggests, have a bottle of wine (if you're of drinking age). Works wonders for me. Get your mind off the topic of writing entirely, however you can. Get some distance and then come back to it when you want to, and not just because you think you should, or because you feel guilty for not writing. And don't schedule your writing... that never works in the long run. wink

Buenos ding dong diddly dias!