My writer's block is driving me crazy!

Mine too. But mine isn't from lack of ideas, or even what to do. Mine is because I've spent so much time editing, I am having a hard time writing again. I wrote about 1k words yesterday and I just couldn't stop editing as I went (or it might have been 3k words). I feel you. It's rough. My advice is to find little ways to knock out the obstacles.

Don't know how to get your characters from London to Paris? Don't worry about it, write the scene of them in Paris you KNOW you want to do, and leave the filling-in for later.

Not sure your character's melancholy would be good for his next scene, but having him get rapidly better after the death of his best friend? Write it how you see the scene and justify his quick mood-change later, after the story's written.

It's okay to not have a cohesive, perfect first draft. I often have schizophrenic characters or un-described physical features, or worlds that might as well be a smoke screen of gray nothingness, because those details often come to me at editing time, when I can fully devote my mind to strengthening a single aspect, over making everything perfect the first time.

And you know what? It works. Take the inspiration you have by the horns and give it hell. Write those parts you feel really strongly about and the rest will come as it comes. At least that way, you're riding high enough to hopefully finish the project, and later on you can decide whether that trip from London to Paris even needs explaining. Perhaps it just needs an overview, something like:

See, you can sum up a trip or some other "boring" parts with one-paragraph summaries that recap them, and then you just begin in the new scene, the one that really inspires you.

Hope that helps.

 

You might not like to hear this, but you just need to make a choice.

Sit down and write something, anything, or don't. It's fear that's stopping you. Fear of not being able to relay the story the way you wish. Fear of not knowing what will happen, or how you'll resolve some foreseen issue (which might not exist any longer by the time you get there). Fear of not living up to authors you admire. Whatever it is, its all fear...nothing more.

Face the fear and work past it, or let the fear keep you from ever achieving your goal. Make a choice to write. Make a choice not to write. Whatever you decide, your making a choice regardless. I'd rather make a choice that puts me in pursuit of my goals.

"People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently."
-Anna Quindlen

 

I kind of don't believe in writers block. It's not that one can't write. The fact that you wrote a post means you're not blocked from writing. You're just stuck on your story.

For me, I just push through. Choose a direction to go with your story and write. It may be the wrong direction, but at least then I'll eliminate one of the directions that doesn't work. Sometimes the first step to finding the right path is to start exploring the wrong paths. Eventually, enough of the wrong paths get eliminated so I can see the right one. Or I find that what I thought was a wrong path is really the right one.

There's a flaw in your story? Make a note to fix that in editing and keep going. Sometimes that flaw resolves itself the further into the story you go. Sometimes arriving at point Z inspires a solution to the problem.

 

I agree with the others. You're afraid. For me it was fear that I would be wasting my time. Writing to a dead end. I dealt with it by doing it. I wasted huge amounts of time.

Then I discovered it wasn't wasted. It was necessary. Filed under "Won't Make THAT Mistake Again". I've got whole chapters for my novel that I've thrown out.

 

I also agree with what others have said. Especially about fear. I kind of wish writer's block wasn't a term. Instead it should be plainly called fear because that's what it is. Fear of what you write won't be good or it won't make sense or someone won't like it or that the wrong people will like it or something. There's nothing that can be really done about fear other than to confront it head on.

However, one huge thing separates writing fear and other forms of fear. If you screw up at work for example, you may be afraid to lose your job. Or if someone threatens you, you may be afraid for your life. Fear in writing is something that can always be fixed. Over and over and over. For example, if I start a story, I may have several things that concern me:

After Melissa cut her hair with the knife, she squeezed her head into the helmet. One way or another she was going to kill this *[email protected]# dragon.

Now there are several things I may be fearful of:

1. I'm writing a female character, but I want her to be perceived as strong. Does cutting her hair make her more like a man? Will that bother different readers? Maybe Melissa should just tie her hair up. That might be better. So OK, that's Fear #1.
2. Does the wording seem clunky? Maybe I could streamline it more. I don't want readers to think my prose is weak. Perhaps I could edit that first sentence.
3. There's a dragon in the story. Will I attract readers who like dragons or disappoint them? Will they like what I come up with as far as the dragon? I want him to be a more bestial type, but some people like more intelligent dragons. I don't want to turn them off as readers. What should I do in this regard?
4. I used an expletive. Will readers that don't like cursing not like my book? Would they prefer my characters to talk more eloquently?
5. I suspect that there may be a fair amount of violence in this book. Does that bother me? Will this bother my readers? Should I tone it down to make it more accessible or stick with my gut?

As you can see, this can go on and on. And with only two sentences. Most people call this the "Inner Editor." This is one of the hardest things to learn how to tame. The Inner Editor is going to pick apart everything you write no matter what. The Inner Editor is a curse of writers who want everything to come out golden. Maybe that works for a small percentage of writers. But for most, it's going to come out a little sloppy.

If it really bothers you to write through the crap, so to speak, then just do a session for 30 minutes, an hour, whatever. At the end of your session, go back and look at what you wrote. If you can think of ways to improve it, jot down some notes. If it completely sucks and you hate everything about it, do the session again (later if you must) and see what turns out that time. I guarantee you if you do these sessions, you'll eventually stumble across something that sparks your interest. And the fear will melt away because enthusiasm and passion are stronger than fear. It's like anti-fear.

So write things over and over until you come across something you can get excited about. And continue to make that thing exciting every day you work on it. When you're finished, then you can go about the grim task of hating it. That's a normal process. I believe it's called "editing."

Anyway, good luck. Kill the fear.

 

I can only say from personal experience, but I felt my style was dull and awful when I first started. It took years and years of writing stuff I knew wasn't what I wanted to write, but I did it anyway because I had that desire to write. I just hoped that one day I would get to a point in which I felt happy with my skills. And to be honest, this didn't happen until I started completing stuff and sharing it. A lot (seriously A LOT) of people hated my writing. But the few that seemed to "get" what I was aiming for encouraged me and told me to keep at it. To keep reading and keep writing and one day I'd get there. Maybe that doesn't happen for everyone as soon as they'd like. Writing is a patient person's game. You have to be willing to put in the time, work through the crap, and keep your nose to the grind or you'll plateau and never be happy with what you're putting out.

For me the solution was really to think, "What do I want to read?" And think this is a common question for writers especially when they start out. What kind of fiction makes you excited? Makes you happy? Sometimes makes you sad even? This is all you can aim for. And start sharing your work. What you think might be dull and boring might be really interesting to other people.

Short version: complete stuff and share it. Most writers never reach their ideal style until years and years of practice and learning what they and their audience like. To me a boring completed story is leagues better than an exciting two or three lines of prose.

AND...sometimes people aren't cut out for a certain kind of medium. Maybe they're better suited to comics or poetry and something else. Dabbling in many different things is the way to enlightenment, I believe.

Edit: Also, Nimue, I read your information about the RPG you're running on the forum a while back. I thought it sounded pretty cool. And there seem to be a fair number of people playing it. So obviously you are not dull.

 

Everyone regrets stuff they share afterwards and cringe at stories they wrote early on. It's understandable. I have a couple of stories floating around the internet that I'm not proud of. That's just part of the process. Everything is bad in hindsight almost. You can ask almost any writer what they think of their own writing and they'll mostly say the same thing.

To be honest, if you don't feel like you want to publish anything in the future, it's perfectly fine to write for yourself and a small group of people. You may find more happiness without the added pressure of people viewing work you're not happy with. I think more and more writers are becoming happy with their niche and not necessarily becoming a blockbuster author.

The key thing is figure out if this is what you really want to do. If it bothers you when you don't write and it makes you anxious, then you should be writing as much as possible. If it gives you more problems than it's worth, then maybe it's better to scale back and do it in a way that makes you comfortable.

 

A friend of mine just posted the following quote from an interview with Allen Williams:

This guy's working on computer graphics of some kind, but I still feel the principle applies to pretty much any kind of art.

I'm not sure how encouraging it is, especially if you've been at it for a long time and feel like you're not going anywhere, but it rings true to me. Trying to be awesome right off the bat can be a bit stifling and you may be too hard on yourself.

A while back I had a look through some of my old shorts from when I started writing a few years back. Sure, they're embarrassingly bad - cringeworthy really - but they also show how far I've come technically. I may not be as good as I'd like to think I am, but I've definitely improved a lot since back then, and that's encouraging.

 

One of the key things I always keep in mind is no matter what your skill level is at the moment, you can always get better. It just takes work and study. I've written and shared, unfortunately, some pretty bad things with friends, who to this day I know can't bring themselves to tell me they're crap.

If you want to talk about fear, how about this. My first ever college writing course I got to be the first person of the semester to read their piece to the whole class. Before that, I had never really shared any of my writing with anyone let alone read it to a whole class room full of strangers. It was definitely a fifty shades of brown moment.

But I got through the course. Learn a bunch of things about writing and myself. And when I look back at the writing I did for that class, most of it was mediocre at best, juvenile and pointless at worst.

To be good at anything you have to work at it. Writing is no exception. If you think about it, Michael Jordan was once pretty crappy at basketball. But he worked at it, a lot, and got better just like anyone at the top of their field. Nothing was just handed to him, and I doubt everything came naturally. Same applies to (insert awesome author here). They kept writing crap until they didn't. They were a crappy writer until they weren't.

Writing isn't a sprint. It's a marathon.

And to give you an idea of the amount of work I put into my writing. Here's a picture of a handfull of the books I've read on writing. I've read each at least twice. There are plenty more not shown and even more videos I've watched.

 

If you're writing to share with others, I'm not sure if this is how I would personally phrase it. For me it's "write in a way that other people clearly understand it." Writing is communication. The more clear the message, the more powerfully it will be heard and felt.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for style, but there's a fine line if crossed where style interferes with clarity and immersion. When that happens, it can be like being trapped in a conversation with a long winded person who takes 15 minutes to just say hello. After first minute they start to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, wah-wah wah-wah wah-wah.

Since we're on the subject of audience, it's also about who you're targeting and what expectations they carry. In experimental writing there's plenty of room for word play and an audience that loves it. Compare that to some people who just want the story and don't really care about the words that convey it as long as they do the job.

What I mean is you don't serve a Big Mac at a fine dinning restaurant, because that's not what people came for, and it's not what they expected. On the flip side of that, you don't serve a $100 kobe steak at McDonalds for the same reason.