people have told me when i have nothing to write, to just get a notepad and paper and just write anything. Unfortunately, i dont know how to do this. Please explain? I have tried a few times but never got anything done
The goal of this is not to get anything done, it's simply to get you writing. It's rather like driving a car randomly around town - you're never going to get anywhere, but you are getting driving practice. So you shouldn't be discouraged when you end this sort of session with several pages of unusable nonsense - that's what's _expected_ to happen. Driving practice makes the process of driving more and more fluid. Over time, you don't need to consciously think about every step - "It's about time to turn left." "It's about time to start releasing the steering wheel to straighten out from this turn." Instead, you find that the actions needed for driving become automatic. The same is true of writing. The more writing you do, the more practice you have with allowing the thoughts to flow from your mind through your fingers, the more automatic that process becomes. In the _long_ run, driving is about going somewhere in particular, and writing is about producing a usable piece of writing. In the short run, this sort of exercise is absolutely not about producing anything at all. ChickenFreak
Free association. Write a very long and florid description of how you feel. Write about why you feel that way. Write about your fingernail, what it reminds you of and what you can do with it. Writing isn't about "having something to write about", it's about communicating the experience of life through words. If you're conscious, you have things to write about, even if it's not a story. Do this and your characters will thank you for a much richer life later on.
I sometimes drone on about my life to get writing. You don't need an interesting life to use that technique, trust me. You could try googling writing prompts online for some ideas or maybe a challenge?
Just write anything, and free-associate. You're overthinking it. If you're frustrated about not having anything to write about, complain on the page about that. Write about how your best friend would have something to write about, because he has this really annoying older brother who listens to German electro-pop music all the time. Would Beethoven like electro-pop? Of course not. Nor, for that matter, would Elvis Presley. How about Elvis Beethoven? Up there on stage, conducting an orchestra by swinging his hips. And I've seen A Clockwork Orange, so I always associate Beethoven with ultra-violence and Malcolm McDowell, who, when you think about it, really should have been the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, because he'd kick ass a lot more than that doofus they got. Guinness, his name was. They named him after beer. I bet all those English actors were drunk back then... You can keep this kind of thing going, effortlessly, for page after page. When you're tired, put it aside. Read it over the next day and you might find an idea in all that crap for a story.
I did this yesterday. Wrote three pages about my new phone and all my feelings that ranged from childish delight to confusion. Well, that was mainly to see if I could write stories on this phone like I could on my old one (I could), but I wasn't expecting to get that carried away. If you really let go and stop thinking its amazing what you get done
