I've definitely got the same problem. I think I probably have about five or six short stories on my computer right now that I thought would be easy to finish, but I was wrong. I figure, if I can't even finish it without losing interest myself, how can I expect someone else to be interested in it when they read it? So if I hit a wall within the first few hundred words, I take that as a sign to just quit that story, which is probably not a good method to use. Regardless, I know exactly where you're coming from, and I find it pretty damn hard to finish anything too!
For the most part I find it's all about relaxing and letting your mind wonder until it's got the ideas for your book. I can't count the number of times I'll be staring off into space thinking of anything but my novel, and then out of the blue I'm hit with inspiration. Because of the way I choose to writer I normally write one line or one chapter at a time. As to others who write from start to finish, I think it was in the extra's of the Fellowship of the Ring special edition that I heard that Tolkien use to do the same thing. He had a group of writing friends that got together down at their pub on campus and would read their latest version. When Tolkien wasn't pleased with how his sounded, he would just throw it in the fire and start on it again the next day. I think it took him something like 12 years to write The Lord of the Rings. I played with Photoshop once for about an hour and couldn't make a box, so I've never gone back.
If youre having a writer's block go and do something other than write. Enjoy yourself and let go of all thoughts of writing until you are ready to come back to it. Another approach that was mentioned earlier in this thread is simply to write constantly even if its a sentence. I try to write at least a page a day and if I can not complete that I strive for half a page. Either way it is something that you will have to overcome to grow as a writer. Another thing is "just write!" Hope everything works out and good luck
If youre having a writer's block go and do something other than write. Enjoy yourself and let go of all thoughts of writing until you are ready to come back to it. Another approach that was mentioned earlier in this thread is simply to write constantly even if its a sentence. I try to write at least a page a day and if I can not complete that I strive for half a page. Either way it is something that you will have to overcome to grow as a writer. Another thing is "just write!" Hope everything works out and good luck
I find writers block are often connected to a specific work/story, and maybe trying to write something else: journal, blog, totally unrelated story, daydreams, poems, a certain characters own diary or whatever you feel like can help you to overcome it.
True, I've found myself in a writers block more than once. Every so often it is because I cant find leads at that moment. My solution is quite simple. I A: Start at a random point in my story. Or B: Open a new document and start a new story to get my mind cleaned up.
I'm in the midst of a three-to-four month period of writer's block at the moment. Everything I produce, no matter how I prepare for it or force myself to try and 'just write' ends up looking like the worst paragraph in the world to me, and is summarily thrown away. For example, I spent 3 hours on a paragraph's worth of writing today, only to delete it with a vengeance. I'm inclined to say the problem stems from a lack of enthusiasm on my part, but I can have a lot of enthusiasm drafting ideas for a short story, only to find it impossible to actually write the damn thing. It hurts, because I love to write, but over time my ability to produce words has atrophied. I used to churn out a page or three in an hour; now I'm lucky if I can do that in a week.
You say you have bad ideas. Write them down. Writing bad stuff is better than not writing. Plus, you may find that these bad ideas turn into good ideas if you can get them typed out and have time to think about them later.
^ True, true! Here's something I tried out: Instead of using the typical manuscript format for my first draft, I just went nuts wih the color and font. The chapter hedings in red Comic Sans, the words in blue Arial Narrow. It doesn't look formal at all. Yet, oddly, it helps me to stop worrying and just write. I mean, I'll do the proper formatting and editing later, when I'm actually done with the story. So...silly fonts and coloring helps a bit, I guess? At least it does for me.
Wow! Early comments were a bit unsympathetic. Don't worry - I agree. Writers block happens to me not become I'm lazy or undisciplined. Mostly I find it happens when I have too many ideas and have no idea which direction to take or everything I come up with it takes me all of a few seconds to realise, 'wait, I got that idea from last night's episode of House' or something. There are a few ways to break it but everyone is different. Lack of inspiration is often the most common cause for me. I plan out what I write but that can be a little boring sometimes when you know where you're going all the time. It's like walking down a paved path - sometimes the best way to break up the bordem is to leapt off that path. Throw out your plan and just write spontaneously, see where things take you. If may be for the better. I concur with 'destinationless', that if you "have ... lost your enthusiasm for the story, why not just start a new one; just keep writing, every day. A journal entry, research, a poem, a short story, part of your novel... if you keep writing, you should be back in the swing of things in no time." Sometimes a break when you have writer's block seems like the best thing but I feel it contributes more to the problem. Try changing your reading material, go away for a weekend or something. Write in a different place like the park or a cafe. Maybe try it in weird places like a mall with thousands of distractions and tonnes of noise. Changing things up can be the best way to jolt writer's block I believe. Another method is perhaps to go back and review your original notes. You may find something there that was previously discarded but may actually fire your imagination now. Perhaps the reason for your block may even be something like the current scene you're trying to write just isn't actually working and your brain is trying to tell you that thing's aren't working and you need to try something else. Maybe you started going wrong a couple of hundred words back and you're only realising it now. More than anything, try to pin down why you have writer's block. Whether it be boredom or you need some motivation or a deadline or something - there will be a reason for it. Working out what will win you the war against it. A friend of mine decided having a deadline helped so she sent whatever she had written each week to me. Something it was just a paragraph and other times a whole chapter. Suffice to say, within a year the book was done. Hope the advice helps.
You're just going through a phase. I'm coming out of a similar phase myself. The other day I found my old school books from 7 years ago and I had a flick through my english book. As a kid I loved english and writing stories was my favourite thing ever. I looked through my old stories from school and I remembered writing them, how I felt as I had written each paragraph. I remember that even through I loved writing, I was never happy with what i'd written. Id 'make do' being only 14, but I never thought I was any good. Having read back through those stories seven years later I realised how incredibly blind I had been. They were actually really good, and 7 years later I found myself being proud of what I had written. Its a similar thing here and now. I too have recently been going through a period where nothing I write is good enough, but it was only a few days ago that I realised that the problem was all in my head. My advice? Keep ploughing onwards. Write, write, write and then read it back a couple of weeks or so later. Maybe you're being too hard on yourself
If we really truly want to solve writer's block, we must have some understanding of what it is, and what causes it. We can't find a solution if we don't truly understand the problem. Here's my own hypothesis, which I'm in the process of testing: I sometimes get the sense that writer's block can happen as a result of TOO much creative energy. When we become creative, when we start putting words down on a page, it mobilizes this creative energy which puts us in a flow. This feels so darn good, and I think everyone here has experienced it. But my sense is that it also takes a kind of endurance to manage that flow. We really like it, but it can be too much for our system (and I think of this physiological as well as psychological ways... I experience creative energy as something very physical). When the energy becomes too much for our to handle, our bodies (and minds) become TENSE. People have different strategies for coping: some reach for food, or drugs, or alcohol, or procrastinate, or obsessively check e-mail. Our energy gets spent on whatever we happen to put our attention on. We use these things to block the flow, because they flow can totally unground out. The body (and the mind) need to GROUND (which is also synonymous to RELAX, or being PRESENT) in order to manifest creative energy into a material medium. Sometimes the substances we use can help our system relax (this is why some people need stimulants, or drugs, or food in order to write). I think the best thing to do for writer's block is to find a personal mechanism with which to GROUND. Our bodies and minds need to relax. On a very physiological level this enables blood circulation in our bodies. This is the physical equivalent of the FLOW that we experience when writing is going well. This past year I've been discovering my body, and learning how to truly feel it, inhabit it, and to release the tensions in it consciously. In itself it's a fascinating, fascinating process. And in that process the writer in me, after having been dormant for quite some time, got activated. Now the words just keep coming. I'm realizing that I can access creative energy through dealing with my body. But I'm also learning that this creative energy can be too much, and so I reach for ways to block it. And what's more... when that creative energy is not channeled into something constructive like writing, it will find other ways to express itself, usually through some emotional turmoil. Wow, I didn't realize that I'd be writing so much in this message. I thought I'd add two sentences, but I guess I got carried away. I'll probably write an article sometime in the coming weeks to express these thoughts more clearly... (if I do, I'll post it on this site: livingprocess.ca) Ha, thanks for bearing with me!
^ To continue that line of thought: Sometimes, creativity bombards you with too many ideas for you to process. For instance, there's never a moment in an author's life where he/she doesn't think, "What if my characters did xyz...", watch them act it out and 'hear' feedback, or see a new character pop up, spill their life story at the author and expect him/her to make a storyline out of it. It also doesn't help if it all happens at the same exact moment, everyone clamoring for the author's attention. As an added bonus, there's that wayward character that keeps jumping here and there, "No, I want to be a starship captain in the year 2251 AD...no, I want to be a British captain in the Napoleonic Wars or maybe a Russian soldier during WWI, or maybe a detective in 1600s Spain. Eh, no, scratch that...I wanna be an assassin in a fantasy kingdom in the year 1120 YC. Or...well..." All that can cause creativity to freeze. It's hard to think when so many people are talking to you at the same exact time in real life, so logically it must be the same if your own characters are doing it too. Meditation can be a treatment for it. It can help calm your brain and be your way of telling your characters to shut up and sit down. You'll deal with them one at a time. It's...hard to explain as I haven't done a lot of meditation, but that period of calmness... ...You just feel like you can handle anything. You're ready to face your characters and say, "Okay, I'm ready now. Who would like to go first? One at a time, now." Extensive meditation will help lengthen that amount of time you're calm and collected.
I really agree with that... the calming power of meditation... focusing the attention instead of letting it get scattered everywhere. And totally agree on the factor of WAY too many ideas at once! Too much is just as much trouble as too little!
GAAAAAAH! OUT OF MY WAY! *smashes through brick wall with head* Do not like writer's block at all. Wake up, brain.
I had the worst writers block for two years but I finally broke it by convincing myself that this is a first draft and it doesn't matter how bad it is it can be fixed in the second or third or fourth or fifth draft. Just write and write and write and don't look back.
I have really great ideas, but it's like there's a barrier there, stopping me from writing anything. I don't feel capable of writing something on my own and that I always need someone to help. Sometimes I can't even TRY. A few months back, I knew a girl who I role played with. She always wrote the storylines and never once let me add anything. Whenever I tried to add something she would say something like "NO WAY! This is what happens instead..." She made me feel useless. I never talk to her anymore, but that's the only thing I can think of that might be the cause of this problem. It's so, so frustrating. I have such great ideas that I can't wait to write about, but I just can't. It even took me half an hour to write this because I felt it wasn't good enough/explained enough. How sad is that? Does anyone have any advice on what to do? Thanks in advance. (EDIT: I thought this was worth adding! I LOVE reviewing stuff. I'm always writing really good reviews, almost every day. It's strange how I can write those, but not anything else!)
Well... It sounds like you need to vent. Why not start a blog? It's a great testing ground for jotting your thoughts/ideas. No one can tell you "NO WAY!" since its your words. It's possible that you're also having problems expressing yourself. Honestly, take every idea you've ever had and write them down. Keep writing. Go back to the ideas you really like and expand upon them. Leave the ones you've forgotten about as a pleasant memory of what once was. The only person that should decide whether or not you can write is you. Never forget that.
try writing a diary about your feeling or whatever you feel like, preferably by hand, it takes away a lot of the feeling that it need to be perfect because no one else than you is going to read it anyway. If you feel like writing down little fragments of story ideas or dialogue or anything you can do that too. that's my advice. there is something to handwriting that always seems to unblock me and I've heard several people saying that it stimulates the creativity.
This sounds like a great idea. I started up a blog a while back where I just write whatever I feel like writing and it's definitely help me learn how to put my thoughts into words. Other than that, you need to remember that you are your own person, and you can make your own decisions.
A journal/blog is a great way to get your ideas on the page. It's important to remember that not all ideas can be turned into stories or novels. Reading good writing is equally important. Look at how great writers do it and learn from them. With enough practice, you'll gain the confidence to start writing (and finish) something on your own.
yep! Blog IS the best way. That way people will come to know what you want to express and you get to express whatever you feel! Besides, if you like reviewing stuff, there are like a zillion magazines and journls out there that deal exclusively in reviewing stuff. Good luck mate!
I have been reading through a lot of the posts for the last hour and haven't found anything that addresses this situation oddly enough. Though I have never had what one would describe as Writers Block but I have had this recurring issue with writing. Ideas, even whole plots, have been forming in my mind but I'm not sure how I should go about communicating it. Reading books recently, instead of analyzing them from an english major perspective I have been analyzing them from a writers perspective. How does a writer communicate something and now I feel lost in the techniques. For instance I have this idea from something I wrote a long time ago. Ideas, symbolically, characterized as dinosaurs or monsters. A sentence, is a mosquito. and story with only a sentence missing is a ferocious dangerous creature hunting for it's own solution. ect. It was inspired by Ray Bradbury's "the illustrated man" an overall story, that his short stories within it." I could communicate and explore an entire world using short stories. But I'm not sure how to communicate that idea, what kind of technique can I use to link these short stories to certain creatures, or show that the creatures are symbolic of how stories interrelate and affect one another. One writer, idea, inspiring another writer. Any help or thoughts on the topic would be highly appreciated!
Usually the solution I have found to these types of problems is to just keep writing. Maybe the type of plot you are talking about is too complex or maybe you want it to be perfect and not mediocre so you want to know how to get better at writing to be able to write it. But writing is like playing guitar, you can't just pick up a guitar and start playing Stairway to Heaven right off the bat. So again, my advice to you would be to just keep writing. If you don't want to waste your first few big stories on this awesome plot idea you have, maybe come up with some shorter/more simpler plots to practice writing. And I know it sounds like I'm Mr. Miyagi telling you "wax on, wax off" but if you just start writing you'll notice tips here and there for how to make your story better. Some things you will try and it will work out, some things won't work and you just improve on them next time. And after a few years of writing, you'll notice a difference in skill. One thing I might recommend if you just want more help getting better at writing... there are plenty of books on writing good stories. And none of them are the end all be all of the hobby/skill but I've read a few chapters of 1 or 2 of these books and you get tips here and there on things you can do.
