I sometimes get a few days where I literally can't be bothered thinking of what to right or I am just not in the mood. Especially for my non-fiction book because I sometimes gets stuck on a certain area. Do you also get like this? Plus, do you also get stuck when writing non-fiction too?
I go through highs and lows. Some days I have too many ideas and can hardly keep up. Others, I'm bone dry and don't even try. What's frustrating is that I don't have very much time to write as it is and my lows, too often, coincide with finally having the time and I won't take advantage of it! With the exception of my memoir, non-fiction usually comes easier to me - the exception being when I'm burnt out on research.
I suppose we are very similar in writing as I can apply your post to myself, also. I consider myself to be much better at academic/formal writing in non-fiction, but I often have times where I have no idea what to talk about until I come back to it.
Absolutely. Possibly even most of the time. Sometimes I force myself to write, sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's like "nah, I want to play games instead" and sometimes I'm like "Why would I write?! Who would every write?! Writing is for boring pussy-nerds!" Sometimes it lasts a minute, sometimes a week. Sometimes I'm able to produce good material during this time, while sometimes it's just futule. It varies in every way it can like most things in life. And I have a feeling its largely because even though I (usually) love writing, it's still my job and I still have to do it and its on a schedule, so my brain's like "Dude, you're working! Why're you working? Work is lame. Let's go stare emptily into the computer monotor until it's time for dinner. At least that doesn't require me to freaking work and actually use my brain and do something I just have to do because I was born a weak mortal human who needs sustenance and has decided it's best shot at a good life is through writing sets of glyphs with a keyboard for people to pay to move their heads back and forth across these symbols only to come to the conclusion I'm just some insane amateur whose idea of a good and worthwhile time is to write crap instead of having fun or doing something with his life". My mind is an ass.
Yes, there are times when I don't feel like writing at all. But seemingly insignificant things can get us going again. Here is an excerpt from a letter Kafka wrote to his girlfriend Milena Jesenska (from Letters to Milena):
I read somewhere that procrastination is the mind's way of coming up with new ideas. I don't know if there's any truth to that. But often, if I'm stuck at a part in my novel, I do something else and then come up with a solution. If you feel apathetic, I recommend reading or writing something else. Whenever I do that, I distinguish the writing I am stuck on...I go back to it and I feel rejuvenated, if that makes sense, by how much it differs from what I was reading/writing in the meantime.
Ha ha. Gave me a chuckle, that one. Sounds like the type of bullshit a writer comes out with to justify his/her not doing anything for the day/week/month. I'm coming up with ideas right now, as it happens
I'm mostly a reader but I think writing is a bit like exercise. There will be days where you have to make yourself do it.
I don't write non-fiction but I don't think that matters. Most writers have days when they would rather do anything but writing. Clean the basement. Do the dishes. Paint the fence. Hell, even your day job feels more fun and rewarding. As I see it you have two possibilities here: a. you write whether you want it or not, even if it's just 2 pages, or b. you give yourself some leeway. For me, which approach I use depends on where I am in the process. Right now I have my second ms ready and submitted to various publishing houses and am awaiting the responses and I'm currently writing the third. (started 2 days ago) I know that if the first of those gets accepted, I will have to take up the work on that one. it means I can be pretty flexible with my ongoing project, I might even have to put it aside for quite some time if the second is going to be published. On the other hand, when I was actually writing that second ms my first novel had gone to print and there was nothing more I could do about it. So I had no choice but to write that second book. If I have no other project at some stage I am pretty disciplined, but when I know I'm ahead of schedule I might even allow myself to rest when I don't feel like writing. That sometimes gives me some distance to the story I'm writing and I can get better insight to eventual problems, so those days are almost never lost even though I don't get anything written. Usually I can go max 3 or 4 days before I feel the urge to write again, and by now I know my writing process enough to not worry about a couple of days of idleness.
Well.. I spend enough time reading, thinking, writing, and editing, as an English major, the last thing I want to do in my free time is get behind the computer for another few hours to write a story, even a short one. I'm just too tired or I need more fresh air or I want to do something revitalizing. So Yes! Heck, I haven't even devoted time to my blog or my personal journal in a while(which I sometimes feel bad about because I've had things worth writing). Whatever the case don't let it get you down. Many people will tell you a "real" writer works through these feelings because they have no choice, they are compelled to write out of more than simple interest. Bah! We always have choice. Spare me the romanticism. I write when I feel like writing and the rest of the time I study, I read, and I live. (Granted, I do waste considerable time writing lengthy, detailed responses here.) If that separates me from writers as "someone who writes" then so be it. I don't particularly care for labels.
Yes I do have those moment's where I don't want to write, today for example I was in a really foul mood and I usually write in an effort to release those feelings but today I just could not write at all.
Definitely, it's all a pert of being a writer. This is why I have the 'minimum word limit' of 300 good words per day ( I usually write 5 days a week). I often end up with much more than that, but even on a terrible day, I can usually come up with 300, even if it's just editing and re-writing something I already wrote. And occasionally, if I really have nothing to give the blank screen, I take a day off, go out, walk the dog, watch some tv shows, read my book etc. Just to empty my head a little.
Plenty of them. Right now I'm having no trouble PLANNING my story, but it's getting longer than I thought it would be, so my time will soon come...
Great answers. I should be more aware of this because as a music producer, I get producers block. But, I have tackled it since my years of producing. The same sort of applies for writing I suppose.
Yes. But I try to discipline myself to write something. And then I find that what I write ain't too bad.
Hardly ever. When I'm very sick, perhaps, down with the flu. Otherwise I always write throughout the day, stopping to deal with other things and then going back to it. I used to have a more rigid regimen, but now that I have a sufficient number of books in the market, I am going a little slower.
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All the time, I try to think about the last full time job I hated that inspired me to try to make a living writing in the first place. If that doesn't work then I will just free write in a journal to get something written at least once a day, even if isn't on topic of the project or script I am writing, any forward progress is okay.
I've been in the non-writing mood for the last couple of days, in fact. on the other hand, I've been thinking about my current project, and I'm starting to get itchy to get back to it. taking breaks is usually good for me; it lets me refocus, and helps me get unstuck. I did deliberately try not to write, for a while... not sure how long I lasted. maybe two years. I gave up when I realized that I'd started writing little ficlets in emails and forum posts. also, my muse was starting to kick me in the brain with her sparkly steel-toed boots again. basically, this is my muse (warning: mild nudity, swearing) http://oglaf.com/blank-page/ (also all of the comics on that site are hilarious, but about as not safe for work as it's possible for anything on the internet to be without actually exploding in genitalia (which is a thing that happens in that comic occasionally))
For me, it's not so much the mood but the time. There always seems to be a list of jobs to do before I can sit down to write but then when I do finally get there, I have to negotiate on-line distractions like social networking and forums ... (said with love). I did find non-fiction easier to write than fiction though. With non-fiction, I was writing from memory, there were no plot holes to think of, no reason why people were doing certain things because everything I wrote, actually happened. The only research I had to do was looking through my old diaries where I had made notes of everything. At the time I made the notes, I had no idea that I would be writing the book, there just seemed so much stuff/appointments to remember that I had to write everything down.
