The Writers Block Thread

Discussion in 'General Writing' started by Sapphire, Sep 21, 2006.

  1. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    I'd be grateful if you passed along the title. This is one area I've had little success in as far as self-improvement goes. My father was a perfectionist and I guess—despite how hard I've tried not to inherit such behaviour—I am too. I'm never satisfied with excellence... if I've ever really gotten even that far.
     
  2. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    I like some restriction, too. It's one reason I like genre conventions and don't feel any urge to push the boundaries. I like knowing that some choices are out of my hands, that X has to be a certain way, but I have complete freedom in how to get to that point. Best of both worlds.
     
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  3. pyroglyphian

    pyroglyphian Word Painter

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    Oh yeah, I hadn't even considered restrictions of genre or form, @Tenderiser, that's a whole other dimension you've pointed out. Nice one. :agreed:
     
  4. KevinMcCormack

    KevinMcCormack Senior Member

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    It must be a major factor for a lot of people, because any writing course i've taken that has attempted to address writer's block has focused on "What are you afraid of?"

    I've never been able to answer, since I don't have any writing fears. I write to make money, there's nothing 'personal' in there. I publish with a pseudonym, so even if people had issues, it's nobody I know personally. I don't read reviews.

    I still get writing block, though.

    And as somebody who's worked as a musician (session work, mostly) , it's common there, too. "Write a hit song." Easier said than done. Many a songwriter has had writer's block. (I think this is the plot of the 1980 rock opera Xanadu? He makes a deal with the Muse Terpsichore.)
     
  5. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    Hi everyone,

    I'm just back from a three year absence from the forum, which was necessery for me to complete my novel. I know not everyone procrastinates, but at the same time it's such a common problem for writers, that I wonder whether others struggle with it too. If so, have you found any techniques to combat it? Or are you looking for ways to overcome it?

    Things I've found that helped me improve my writing discipline:

    1. Reading about other writer's successful routines, and starting to write every single day.
    2. Reading Leo Babuta's blog "zen habits" and going through his online programme.
    3. Reading Brenne Brown's books "Daring Greatly" and "Rising Strong" and doing the online course.
    4. Limiting my time online except for work and research.
    5. Daily meditation, exercise and gratitude journalling.
    6. Using Ulysses app to improve my workflow on the go and across devices.

    Perhaps we can share experiences and help each other here.
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2017
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  6. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think deadlines are helpful - preferably externally imposed, but even the ones I give myself are useful. "This book will be finished by the end of June" or whatever.

    But the most valuable thing for me has been my spreadsheet. Every day that I write new words, I enter the end-of-day word count into the spread sheet and it automatically subtracts the start-of-day total to give me the number of words I wrote that day, adds it to the weekly total and adds it to my annual total. I know I have to write 7K words a week to meet my annual goal, but I also know I'll have time off over the summer and be able to write more then, so I don't panic if I'm a bit behind in May as long as I'm a bit ahead by September. And it's satisfying to see the numbers grow through the year. If I have a stretch with few new words, I'll write in a little explanation for myself - not an excuse, just a record so I can look back at the end of the year and try to understand what may have gotten in the way (assuming I don't make my goal, which I usually do).
     
  7. Teresa Mendes

    Teresa Mendes Member

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    For me, it's having deadlines, watching videos on youtube on how to write and having a very complex outline (I outline scene by scene) so I don't ever get writer's block. Also, sleep well =)
     
  8. Frostbite

    Frostbite Member

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    Exactly the same! Every new week I look at where I've been, take a look what I want, take a look how much time I have for it, and then say "Okay, at the end of the week I have ... written/rewritten/done" It's a very pleasant way to work, and I kinda do it with everything.
     
  9. Elven Candy

    Elven Candy Pay no attention to the foot in my mouth Contributor

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    Reading threads on the writing forum helps me a lot because it gets the juices going or gives me a much needed break that's still related to writing. The only other thing I've found that helps me is to force myself to just start writing. I reread the last few sentences, and I just start the continuation off them. If I find myself completely uninterested in continuing, and I've already had a long break from it, that usually means I went off track and I have some deleting/rewriting to do before I can continue.
     
  10. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    I have reverse writing block right now.

    Meaning I know exactly what I'm doing, I'm in the mix, but I have to finish my last month of art education, so I'm down to writing and drawing only one page a week. Very very frustrating. Instead of my engine being stalled, I'm stuck in traffic. When that traffic clears Ima tear into this story.
     
  11. nastyjman

    nastyjman Senior Member

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    Pomodoro technique worked for me. Basically, I give myself 26 minutes of writing and then 4 minutes of rest. I use a timer for this. I do this until I'm satisfied with what I wrote that day.
     
  12. cherrya

    cherrya Active Member

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    I usually procrastinate when I know what I need to say in this chapter but also know that I'll have to 'work hard' to establish the correct mood/feel.I'm just sooo lazyyyy! I could just write one line and start it from there but will it be as good as if I took the time to do it right and beautifully??? It won't. I keep trying and I'm never, ever, ever, ever happy with it. I'm the worst, why do I do this to myself?

    Man, this is not turning into a rant. What I usually do is find something (related to the 'feel' I'm trying to go for) that'll inspire me so much that a sentence will pop into my head straight away (don't try this for the entire book, you'll never finish it). Once a few sentences are written down, the rest comes relatively easily. It guides me for the rest, and I'm usually good until I start another chapter and want to physically die once more. Good I don't have deadlines yet...

    What helps me :

    - Movies (though I'm usually even more lazy after a movie, works like 40% of the time. The movie has to be spot on or it won't work. )
    - Music (but not movie music, it influences me too much into a style that isn't my own. I find myself trying to copy the mood and it's not always right).
    - Models (exclusively high fashion, if you're into that. I think of it as art personally, and the models often inspire me in the way that they are. I find myself wondering what kind of person they might be, what happened to them, etc.)
    - Documentaries (mostly historical documentaries! I have no problem pausing a documentary and write a few lines while I'm more reticent to do anything during a movie. Also history is so human...)
    - Quotes from my favourite writers.
    - MBTI researches (but I might just be really weird on that one)

    I have a lot of free time in the summer, yes.
     
  13. malaupp

    malaupp Active Member

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    I try to do something related to writing every day. Usually it's writing in a journal (especially during grad school) or perusing writing forums. Or doing little brainstorming things. Anything to keep it in the forefront of my mind.

    NaNoWriMo has helped me on occasion as well. But giving myself specific days to work on it helps. For example, "I will write x amount of words on this day of the week".
     
  14. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    @jazzabel

    I realize I was wrong. I think there was a time that WF did distract me a bit. The trick for me was to start writing before doing anything else, even if just for fifteen minutes. That way I've got the brain warmed up on the right thing. From there, it's easy to write for twenty minutes and take a minute or two break perusing whatever website you'd like (freestyle pomodoro).
     
  15. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    Glad to see you back, @jazzabel.

    I'll discuss my methods for dealing with procrastination tomorrow.
     
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  16. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    Great to see you too @EdFromNY
     
  17. sprirj

    sprirj Senior Member

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    This sounds exactly like what I need. Do you have a template? :p
     
  18. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Hello!

    Though I wanted to write for a very long time, when I get down to it, I always get hang up on technicalities. For instance, I have an idea for a plot where a guy sets out to explore this fictional, sort of a medieval-European continent. He keeps going in one direction, mostly on foot, and sometimes it takes months of walking in solitude before he encounters a village, where the natives never even seen an outsider.

    Now... Even though it's a simplified premise, it raises more technical questions than there are kilometres this poor fella's walked. Firstly, since the villages are isolated that means there are no roads between them, so how fast could a person traverse European wilderness? But then, Europe is rather diverse in terms of climate and terrain, so what would happen it he encountered sweltering sun, or snow, or mountains, or sand dunes? What if he got a donkey to carry him? How long would it live before it died of exhaustion and hunger?

    Secondly, what should the scale of this continent be? How spaced apart should the villages be to make it plausible that they've absolutely no contact with anyone outside. I also said that the natives have "never even seen an outsider", what if I was to alter that to "never even suspected that outsiders exist"? How big would such a world have to be to accommodate for months, maybe years, of continuous walking?

    See what I mean? And I'm SERIOUSLY holding back here. These kinds of questions always prevent me from writing. Of course I could do research, but since answers only breed more questions, the research never ends. How do you guys deal with this issue?
     
  19. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    It seems like you have a premise but not a story. I find that when I start hammering out an actual plot, it makes certain demands of the initial premise. My last wip was a 'road trip' story of sorts and when I went into it I didn't have any particular mental image of what the fictional country was going to look like or how large it was going to be, but as I figured out the story, the setting just adhered to whatever I needed it to be to serve that story. Do you want the mc's donkey dying and him having to make it the rest of the way on foot to be a beat? Then you engineer a setting where that can happen. Do you want entirely self-sufficient villages? Then you put them incredibly far apart and you create scenarios that would make the people leery of travelling - maybe they're just content since they have everything they need, or maybe they're fearful of the difficult trek to get anywhere else.

    I'd work on a story. Maybe think of them as 'episodes' or short stories about each of the adventures this guy has at and between the villages and stitch them together later - it might be less daunting.

    If you're making an original setting, the details are all up to you. The setting is whatever you need it to be.
     
  20. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Interesting take. I thought I hadn't revealed enough about the story for anyone to make such a claim. It is true though, another problem, that's perhaps even more crippling to my writing is that I'm infatuated with world building, but not personal stories. To me, the nomenclature of the side character's people is usually more interesting than the main character. But hey, apparently Tolkien was no different :).

    Your advice seems brutally simple and final. I can't even ask a follow up what-if question, because using this logic, by the time I finish typing, I answer it myself. Yet it's so much harder to put into practice. I want to put numbers on everything, because I feel that they add authenticity, because they circumvent narrative perspective. What I mean is that I could say that "the journey dragged on endlessly", but the moment I say "30 kilometres" it will completely change the way the reader perceives it. It will be immediately conveyed that it's about the distance real life villages are spaced out. That in normal circumstances it's a whole day of walking and several hours on horseback. That it would be normal for the inhabitants of both points to be well aware of each other, and engage in trade.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2017
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  21. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, that ain't gonna work. World-building is awesome but it's got nothing to hold it up without personal stories.
     
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  22. QueenOfPlants

    QueenOfPlants Definitely a hominid

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    I wonder why the villages lost contact to each other. I mean - in real life people settled an area by coming from one point and spreading.
    And many peoples that live in small groups (e.g. nomads in central asia) make sure they meet every once in a while to intermarry.
    Otherwise the gene pool in the isolated groups would not be sufficient.

    So the first question I had was: What catastrophe happened that the villages are isolated now?
    Was it a desease that wiped out many villages? Was it some supernatural threat that forbids traveling?

    In real life trade before the medieval was always long-distance trade. We had that in the paleolithikum already. So what is the reason this world doesn't have that?

    Is your protagonist trying to find that out? And maybe trying to re-establish trade and travel?
    Maybe you can strongly interconnect your preference for worldbuilding and the story you tell.
     
  23. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    I read somewhere that the minimum population that can sustain itself is 50 or so. I think it does take into account gene mingling. There are societies of this size, that refuse to engage with any outsiders, that exist even today. The tribe of the North Sentinel Island being one example.

    You might be onto something with those questions ;). Do you have any practical advice regarding "strongly interconnecting my world building and the story"?
     
  24. QueenOfPlants

    QueenOfPlants Definitely a hominid

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    Interesting. I didn't know that.

    Not really, as I'm still at the beginning of the learning-to-write process. Storytelling is not my greatest strength. ^ ^

    I just had the idea that your protagonist and you can explore the world together. If the story is about exploring that world and its history, then maybe you don't have such a strong split between worldbuilding and storytelling. Maybe you feel more comfortable with that.
    That stuff you're researching is probably the same the protagonist ponders when he plans his trip. I know I wouldn't simply go on a journey to whereever without trying to figure out which obstacles I could encounter and how to overcome them.

    And if you decide to let your protagonist go on a quest to solve the mystery and maybe re-establish contact, then you have a goal for him. You can start asking yourself why does he want that? What drives him to leave his home and travel? What sets him apart from his peers?
    Does he have a problem at home that needs to be solved? (E.g. he need to find a wife that is not related to him or his village needs something they have heard exists somewhere else but not where they live, ...)

    Then you can start building a story from that.
     
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  25. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    Snow and sand dunes? You're combining Northern Europe and Northern Africa...

    Isolated villages? Not in Mediaeval Europe. Not in the sense of total isolation, anyway. In the sense that strangers rarely came to town, and that when they did they were usually collecting taxes or young men to fight in somebody else's war, yes, absolutely; and that's why strangers are viewed suspiciously! Yes, roads weren't good, but Alfred the Great (871-899) finally defeated the Danish threat by building fortified towns and connecting them with good (that's a relative term!) roads so his troops could be rushed from here to there to meet any raiding parties. In 1066 Harold Godwinsson marched an army 185 miles from Hastings to Stamford Bridge (in Yorkshire - not the one that Chelsea play at!) in four days. That's one of the great forced marches of military history, but it gives an idea of how far and how fast you could travel in those days. If I were to plan a walking holiday nowadays, I'd look at 25 miles per day as absolute tops. That's 6 hours at 4 mph, or 8 hours at 3 mph, and a nice pub to put me up in at the end of the day! Factor in some rough terrain, crossing a river (fording, because there would have been few bridges away from towns) and that figure can easily go as low as 10 miles in a 10 hour day...and then wilderness camping for the night/having to trap/hunt for game to eat. And there's the ever-present threat of attack; Earl Tostig of Northumbria was attacked whilst returning from visiting the Pope. What chance would a solitary traveller have of avoiding this? ETA: By using the "old nail" anti-theft device...he's got nothing worth stealing...and by NOT having an armed guard that advertises that he's worth robbing.

    A donkey to carry him? Non-starter. A donkey just couldn't handle the weight for any great distance. Although he might have one to carry his worldly goods, but that would make him pretty damned wealthy; there's a strong mediaeval tradition of the pedlar carrying his stock in trade on his back as he hiked from town to town.

    As has been mentioned, you really need some sort of post-colonisation event to cause isolation; if you consider the Viking settlement of Greenland, contact was broken between the Greenland settlement and Iceland/the rest of Europe when the Little Ice Age between 13th and 19th centuries caused the North Atlantic to be more inhospitable than normal. Prior to that, the Vikings had roamed almost at will.

    Also, remember that rivers (Danube/Rhine/Rhone/Volga, etc.) were good trade routes in Europe; the Vikings travelled from the Baltic to the Mediterranean (they formed the Varangian Guard in Constantinople) in their longships.
     

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