Writers' block

I believe it exists. People do get it after all. But should it exist? Nah - just bang out any old shit and then polish it afterwards. I've never had writers block, but I have written an awful lot of shit in my time when otherwise I might have been better off giving it up for a bad job.

It can sort of exist, but as Pete said, there's a virtue in just writing now and polishing later.

Yeah - I kind of had it for most of last year (in the cottage- industry sense of not feeling able to write stuff for NYLPM and FT). It started as an enjoyable break from the pressure I felt to write stuff and I was all for it, and then gradually it became this niggling bugbear of self-doubt and mental blankness, and after much pushing it went away.

The best remedy is, if you're planning on writing a fairly long piece, get it all done in one go, i.e. spend some time doing your research, then rough notes, then draft, then final copy. If you go away from things and keep coming back to them, my experience tells me that such pieces never get finished - for example, my Pulp piece took about three hours from conception to final copy (and my CoM stuff has a similar timescale), whereas my Gillian Welch piece was started five months ago and seems to have run into something of a dead end. Even if it ever gets finished I suspect it's not going to be very good.

self-doubt and mental blankness

Creepily familiar.

Marcello is dead on. There are NUMEROUS things I've started & never finished. (But I WILL go back & finish them! I WILL!)

When I actually sit down to write nowadays, I'm totally in the "fuck- it-all" zone. If it's for someone/place besides myself, I sit back, give it time to settle, and then work on it. Getting it down in one sitting is very important. I'm such a flake when it comes to long- term task committment. (Shout outs to those of us prone to extended fits of nostalgia during Spring Cleaning projects.)

It can be a very convenient excuse for one's procrastination, but don't let it take hold! I haven't written a complete piece of fiction in SEVEN YEARS! (Give or take one or two little things.) But don't get down on yourself! The worst thing you can do is stop. It might feel uncomfortable or wrong, but you have to fight through it.

(Please note that I'm saying this for myself as much as for other folks.)

Yes, Anna - very familiar. I think this happens to a lot of people all the time, it's happening to me when I try to write ANYTHING recently, but I still manage a few things and it's getting better. Just writing ANYTHING really *is* the best way to go, even if it hurts. It seems to be being made into a huge issue - which I know is half of the problem - but really, I think if you let yrself think of it that way then you'll never get over it.

i write reams when the words come and then shut up wehn they don't

yes the finish-in-one-go is a good rule, esp. if you have a cryptic bent: often when i comne back to stuff after a "break" i haven;t the slightest idea what i was talking about, a problem which only occasionally arises when i'm actually WRITING. My major procrastination excuse = the "need" for further research (tracer h.said something abt the psammead which it up my Procrastination Centres big-time, eg i now have a voice in my head saying You cannot start to finish the LotR piece until you have (re)read ALL enesbit, which = bollox, but has sometimes entirely thrown off my game (my actual on-going BOOK for example was shunted into the sidings for a long while when i realised i didn't understand hegel well enuff to bluff ppl who did — even tho he quite possibly WON'T EVEN BE MENTIONED!!!)

haha tom i will get you hornbyXoR and kym&king sometime soonish, except my buffy deadline caught up w.me

There are NUMEROUS things I've started & never finished

There is ONE thing I've started & never finished, and its insidious effects drip-drip slowly every day and the misery just mounts up. I was built for the short turn-around and not the long haul, and I wish I'd known that before I started.

PS mark s weren't you reviewing the 'Reading the Vampire Slayer' book? Or did I muddle up? I thought it was horrible.

Thanks you lot.

Have been stuck in a three day hell with deadline looming. Reading new answers made me feel less pathetic and not so bad about just doing it and letting someone higher up the copy food chain deal with it. Off to take much belated lunch break now I'm done.

I reckon it's all in the planning. Research as procrastination, no, but planning, yes. It possibly depends what you're writing, mind you. If it's a piece of fiction (I've just written a play) I think you need to plan every atom of plot. It's a bit like, er, unpixellating a picture (you know what I mean) - start with the idea, work out the basic building blocks, weave in more layers of detail until it's clear. All right, here's another analogy. It's like a landing strip at night. Every landing light is a bit of pre-planning. Get a whole strip of lights and the actual landing's a piece of piss.

Until you know where it's going, don't write a word. If you've thought of a funny bit of dialogue, tough shit. You're not allowed to write it down 'til you've done your planning.

This way, once you've started, you're much less likely to a) be demotivated when you hit a brick wall (there are no brick walls, you've planned your way right through them) or b) write a fragment of something and then re-write it to death before you've even attempted to finish the rest of your first draft.

Now this may not go for all types of writing, and even for my kind it's not a universal law - some genii can only work spontaneously - but it works for me.

A writer friend told me he's got two things stuck on his pc. One says:
Don't get it right - get it written.
And the other
Be a writer: You're shit at everything else.

ellie yes it is very disappointing: academics eh, can't live with em pass the beernuts

Haha, I didn't think it was academic *enough*. A lot of 'em weren't anyway, f'rinstance Zoe Jane Playden is "a health service administrator attached to the University of London". That must be uncomfortable, ha ha do you see? I didn't get the book out just to make that weak pun, btw, just to return to its original owner which is why it was on desk/on mind to start with; oh dear, I have protested too much. Today hasn't been good, which brings me back to WRITERS BLOCK. It makes me antsy with the verbal diarrhoea anywhere but where it's needed.

(yes dr vick phd told me off for the same thing: when i say "academic" i apparently mean "NOT academic")

(in fact i did a thread about it)

I think writers' block, for the most part, stems from trying to write something when there really is nothing readily available for writing. If that makes any sense. I've found that when I am suffering from a block, nearly everything I wrote sounds affected, contrived, and just plain crap. It's best to just not write anything at all. This probably explains why I probably only write a paragraph per week of actual not terrible stuff.

I got chronic writer's block about 5 years ago and it's taken me all this time to get the motivation back to start writing again. I've learned that if you write lots and lots some good stuff will shine amongst the crap, which was something I'd forgotten about my early forays into writing.