Anyone else suffer this? I don't mean from time to time, but after a given duration of writing, every time you write? Thankfully my plot is unfolding nicely at the moment. I know what I need to write next and have a vague idea of the scenes following that too, but in spite of this I'm totally spent after three to fours hours. I don't get bored of the story, but I do get bored of being creative.
Yes. I experience this regularly, but I think it's for a different reason. When my semester is in full swing, I have to do so much reading and writing that when I actually have free time, I seldom want to write more. In times like these, I edit previous stories, and, sometimes, that gets me in the mood to write more. Sometimes, I just read over my list of to-be-written ideas and occasionally, I'll write one of those. I think it's important to listen to yourself, but I also think it's important to train yourself to find a way to continue down a specific path, even if that means editing rather than writing. For me, it's all about forward motion, even if I'm not writing any new words.
Yes. I'm going through a period like that right now. I need to be able to let go of the stuff of life and just go back to dreaming. I used to spend lots of time before going to sleep and after waking up, just thinking about my story. Now I drop immediately off to sleep and get up as soon as I wake up. Ever since I've retired, I've struggled to get that dreaming time back.
It's funny you should say that. When I started writing today I knew I needed to rewrite an earlier scene. It was an important plot point that I needed to add, and wanted to get it in place before I continued. It took me a good couple of hours to rewrite the scene and add in this plot point, and by the time I was ready to pick up the story I was already feeling the drain from the rewrite. I only managed one extra scene before I'd had enough.
Totally normal. It's just like working out... like your muscles, your imagination only has so much potential energy available before it has to rest and regroup. Push it too much and it stops doing meaningful work for you.
What @Homer Potvin said. This happens to me often lately. Thanks to Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit, I realize I've probably been using the wrong approach to my writing schedule. Twyla Tharp, for those who are unfamiliar with her work, was an award-winning choreographer. This bit of wisdom (paraphrasing): She never leaves her dancers exhausted at the end of the session, because she knows she needs them to come back fresh and energized and ready to work the next morning. She said this applies to any creative endeavor: end while you still have still have gas (creative energy) in the tank. She said it eliminates a lot of sitting around trying to figure out where to start every morning. Easier said than done, I know. I haven't succeeded at it yet, because it's a very new concept for me. Writing myself to exhaustion was always my norm.
Yes. This. After a while or working, whether I'm plotting ideas in my notebook or actually writing, it just starts getting really hard to focus, and I get distracted easily. This is usually when I switch to farting around on here (lol) or reading a book for fun.
I'm suffering from dullness fatigue. My job is so boring during the off season (seriously, in an 8 hour day I might answer 4 phone calls and put in 2 orders, and I can't leave my desk for more than a few minutes because God forbid I might miss a phone call) that the creative side shuts down. I'm looking for other work, but in the mean time I'm straining to find ways to get the creative synapses firing again. They've been dormant for too long.
They do, but when there's THAT much down time it's really hard to be creative after a while. The boredom just puts you into a type of road hypnosis. Desk hypnosis, maybe?
But wouldn't you be at a desk anyway, if you were writing under normal circumstances? I sort of know what you mean - a bit like a busman's holiday.
It's the being forced to sit in the same cubicle all day. When I'm home, if I get stuck, I go wash dishes, take the dog for a walk, or a host of other things that break the monotony. I can't do that here, so I wallow in it instead. When I was teaching and I had almost no free time, I wrote far more then I do not. Maybe something to be said for having to find time to do it versus knowing you have nothing but time.
