Writer's Block

A good possible trick is to try and write for a new outlet.

1. Good fun reading -- something simple and uncomplicated that reminds you of what, at root, it is that makes you want to write in the first place. (Or, if it turns out lousy, reminds you that you can do much, much better.)

2. Change of scenery.

3. Best of all: deadlines. In lieu of external ones, just make yourself sit down and write crap. "Writer's block," I've decided, is the equivalent of getting lost driving somewhere and then just stopping by the roadside and standing around. When you think "this is going nowhere," keep going -- the more you wallow in the crap, the sooner you'll notice the way out.

Good luck, Tom -- you write good things, and we want to see more of them.

Luckily I am now at the point where posher friends with flats in Brighton/houses in France are offering me free, quiet space. I'm gonna need both. When I do sit down to write I can do a 5000 word SS in a day.

I get over them by falling in crush again.

I have discovered that I write far more fluently and (to me) interestingly, when I am NOT BEING PAID. This is a disaster.

I've not written anything for a year and a half now, enjoying similar tootling about as you say Tom. Though I have two projects which are slowly building (I've even been doing research - a first for me!) - one of which I imagine will burst out with a vengence in October.

I've got the same problem at the moment, but the warm weather means I'm quite content to sit around and do arse all / play on ILE. Maybe I should move somewhere with a colder climate.

Deadlines are the only thing that really work for me however. Like Josh, I'm guessing, I have a terrible tendency to prolong the research when what's required is sitting down and starting.

Blockage in songwriting exercises - these'll flush them: 1. write something in a style that you never use 3. steal a famous song, re-write the lyrics, then find a new tune. 7. brainstorm around someone you know, then sing a tribute.

I also have trouble if I stay in one place too long; at the moment I've got no new stimuli coming in (possibly because I'm blocking them out) and, while this isn't particularly bothering me and indeed is fairly pleasant and calming, nothing's interesting me enough to actually write about it.

But I'm sure that question must have been asked here before: is it better to be content and never write anything again or spend a lifetime of agony producing a great body of work?

Please don't beat me up.

Pokemon is overrated.

And already I'm thinking of possible retorts. Luckily I'm going home so I'll find out on Monday.

I'm getting out of it now. Slowly...slowly...

But it is a bugger.

I wrote thousands and thousands of pages from January to May. It slowed down to ten a week. Then stopped altogether as a questioned...am I talented??? Is this worthwhile.

And now it's started back up again.

How, when writing, do you break down chapters, I've been doing it by character and the similar amount of pages per chapter.

Is their any idea on how to break it down?

I actually analyse stuff like this when I'm reading. Hahaha...very sad and true. And the aesthetics, paragraphs and what not...

Does anyone else do that?

And naming characters...do I be ballsy and name the characters after the people they were inspired, or just make up names (very hard to come up with convincing names....)??????

My family is going to disown me after this is done, can't help it, they are genius lunatics!

I am experiencing the most crushing writers' block right now. I mean I've got ideas but I have no confidence in them for some reason and just can't face turning on the word processor and looking at a blank screen thinking "Now I gotta fill this up". Has anyone else ever felt like this and how do you get over it...

in the sense of "being unable to start/complete" a specific task it happens when i lose confidence in the approach i have taken: the solution here for me is to switch into a mode of writing which is still basically comfortable and easy

(eg write a review of such-and-such as if it was an email to so-and-so about the same object)

i actually have a pathological fear of FINISHING anything (from books to marmalade): a good exercise for mark s fans wd be to spot the "joins", the unfinished paras/ideas/bits where i used deadlines or other excuses to say FUCK IT and press submit/post the envelope whatever

Writing about music is much harder for me than writing a story or anything else. I don't understand why, but from time to time, I feel like anything I have to write about the music I love is null and void of what I really want to say. I don't know if this is writer's block but I wish it would pass.

Actually the only thing I have censored myself on - not on the grounds that Mark S wouldn't like it, sorry - is saying that ILM has got a lot more rockist, cos even if it's true I'm bored of fighting over that word.
― Tom, Friday, 27 July 2001 00:00 (9 years ago)

A hahahhahahahahahaa.

Sorry, it was the date on that which made me laugh. The idea that ILX has been getting steadily more rockist since less than a year after it was founded. (Did any of us have any idea that it would still be going 10 years later?)

I've had writers block for so long I don't even think of it as writers block any more, but more like "I just don't do this any more."

Writing is much easier when it starts out as shameless playing around. You can always get serious with it if the original blob looks worth hammering into shape.