The Writers Block Thread

I'm a fan of whisky and Coke, or Pepsi if you prefer.

 

Weed? Whiskey? Cocaine? What the heck is wrong with you people? Serious writer's block is exactly the reason God invented chocolate.

 

Never tried weed or cocaine but I do love good super dark chocolate...and a glass of scotch

 

I’ll take the lagavulin. You can keep your nasty speysides.

 

Exactly. My feelings never enter into it. I have a job to do and I do it whether I'm in the mood or not. It's why I'm on book 7 for the year and I'll finish 8 by December 31. While other people are making excuses, I'm writing. It's how successful writers are.

 

But surely, we must allow Life to get in the way? Take it to the extreme, say if someone comes home and finds their entire family members murdered, wouldn't that be a valid reason to take a break? Things like could and do happen, no?

 

How often does that happen though? There's a huge difference between something major and traumatic and "I don't feel like it". I haven't missed writing a single scheduled day in three years. I'm not looking for excuses not to write, I'm going to write until it is physically impossible for me to do so. Most people I see in the writing community are looking for excuses not to do it. That's why they don't get anywhere.

 

Same here. I don't write on weekends or holidays but that's never an excuse not to perform. I write, at a minimum, 25k a week and almost always far more. On Thanksgiving, for example, I'm still going to hit my 25k for the week even though I won't write on that Thursday. I just have to make it up other days. It's all about commitment.

 

Neither am I and it took me decades to be able to do this. I figure I've only been consistently hitting 5k a day in the past 2-3 years. It just takes perseverance and dedication. I also don't write while I edit or plan but I don't expect to and my editing and planning are getting a lot faster as I keep working on them.

 

I usually take a break and write on a different project, usually works to get me out of a rut.
I'd advise against chasing 'new' ideas with this method though, cause nothing'll ever get done lol
Pick two (maybe even three if you're feeling spicy) ideas to work on and alternate every couple chapters.
Trust me when I say this 'usually' works.
And most of the time when I get 'stuck' in a scene, writing it anyway makes that feeling go away for some reason.

 

I don't disagree a high-level commitment is helpful in the writing journey. I'm simply saying the reason behind 'excuses' is not necessarily the unwillingness to commit but often the lack of experience, knowledge, and support to develop that commitment in the first place.

 

I try to do everything to bring back the inspiration. I visit my favorite cafes and order my favorite food, listen to my favorite music and read the writers that I really like. Sometimes it happens that I have the inspiration to write works of fiction, but I lack the strength and energy for academic writing. EduBirdie, which employs professional writers, helps me a lot.

 

A lot of it is a lack of realistic expectations. People think that the words are just going to fall onto the page like magic and it doesn't work that way. Writing is hard. It will always be hard and the only way to be successful at it is to have the commitment and the work ethic to push through no matter what. It's why, if you look at beginning amateur authors, most of them are just making excuses for why they're not getting anywhere. It's why most of them never get anywhere at all. Jettison the excuses, put your butt in your seat and just write! There is no other way.

 

Of the several jobs I have, writing is probably the easiest and most enjoyable. Even with the necessity of kicking my procrastinating self into gear periodically, it's what I do best.

Querying agents- now that is hard.

 

I’m still stuck with writers block. When I hit the block the 1st time with my main fanfic I swapped over to working on my 2nd a bit until the block hit me there too. Now I’m drowning in the block on both, games, books, and the gallon of vodka I drank isn’t doing anything for me. It’s annoying and I’m definitely thinking I just need someone to comment on my 1st 2 chapters of my Fic and hope like he.ll the pat on the head will kick the block out.

 

That's horrible. What was the time span of this happening?

 

Oh man, the timeline for that is all over the place, I got up to chapter 4 of Fic 1 and then had like a 2 month long block. So I started working on Fic 2 and got about 8 chapters of that before the block switched places. I got up to chapter 10 for Fic 1 before the block came back and did another 8 chapters for Fic 2. Then I had a duel block on both which made me start a stand alone, I just managed to chip a little bit of the block away for that today but not much.

fic 1 got a little work done on it, but not much, and I’m seriously debating letting someone beat the snot out of me to keep me from doing the entire play through of Skyrim for Fic 2, even though I’m not gonna lie, chapter 1 looks really hot.

 

Morning all,

How do you deal with writers block? Im kinda stuck right now and having trouble breaking through so I need some help.

Thanks,
Cats

 

I got your back, fam

Writer's block might be a healthy and natural mental process. It lets our inspiration catch up with the writing.
This idea that it's something to be overcome or pushed through is really for when writers are paid by the word or have publishers' deadlines. And online there is a kind of self-help cult that doesn't really care if our projects are inspired, or matter to our culture - they just want us to be engaged, subscribing to YouTube channels, and sending off for courses.

If writer's block lasts a few days, weeks, or months it will most likely pass again once the unconscious mind has had time to make some more ideas of the quality that it knows the outside culture requires. If it gets longer than that, there's a stark decision between forcing through to completion or shelving the project. A lot depends on what is the wordcount, and is the plot and the ending already mapped out?

 

I've found it's helpful to try to identify what might be causing your writer's block. Is there something knotted in your story that needs to be untangled? A specific scene that just doesn't want to be written? Are you really busy and stressed? Did you write a ton and now feel burned out?

Most of the time when I have writer's block, it's because of a plot knot. I"m a hardcore planner, so you'd think I'd have the kinks worked out, but nope. Figure out what part of the story 'feels wrong' or isn't working, then work backward, define why it isn't working as specifically as possible. Once you've identified the problem, you can spend some time mulling over some possible fixes, and once you implement them, odds are good that writer's block will have evaporated.

If you're on the tired/burned-out end of the spectrum, taking a few days' break to rest and recharge can help. Try for a full 8 hours of sleep, read a few books/watch TV that has the same sort of feel you're going for (if you're the type of writer that can read while they're writing), and don't beat yourself up for not writing, but do set a date for when you plan to try to start up again (it's easy for a few days to stretch into a few weeks or a few months.). Maybe do a bit of freewriting, keep the writing gears going.

I will have to disagree with evild4ve and say that sometimes, just pushing through it really can help. If you can't find an issue, and a break didn't help, then try sitting down and section a block of time out of your day every day for, say, 2 weeks, just to write. Even if you're struggling to get words down, don't do anything else in that time period/location. Sometimes you can, in fact, carve through the block and break out on the other side. And, if you create a habit of writing every day (Assuming you don't already have one) then you can trick your brain into going into 'writing mode' on demand. This approach tends to work well for people who write irregularly, or who frequently struggle to finish projects.

 

It really does depend largely on what's causing the lack of motivation. Sometimes we start off excited about a story idea but as it develops it turns out it just isn't as good as we had hoped, and we can't be excited about it anymore. Or sometimes it's something more specific, as Idiosyncratic suggested. You should try to figure out if it's something that can be fixed or if it's endemic to the story idea itself (this is assuming the problem is in the story idea and not just a lack of motivation on your part to write at all).

I find that when I have an aversion to a particular story I can't work up any motivation until I go in and start working with it in some way. I'm outside of it, and I can't get any motivation going until I get inside again, often through free writing about the story's situations, characters, or themes. Freewriting takes off all the pressure—you're not actually writing on the story itself, you're just playing around with ideas freely, and maybe something will lead to a solution. But once you start, often you get that story engine started again and get it revving, and then you find you're working on the story again. Or by freewriting all around the story (writing about it) you find what the problem was, or you find some new approach to something and suddenly realize that was the problem, you had a bad approach to some part of it.

The only real way to get excited about it again is to plunge back into it in some way and be writing.