2 posts tagged “writers block”

Is it just my little corner of Vox that's gone quiet, or are there fewer people posting regularly on Vox these days?  

How do you beat writer's block? 
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

If someone has a good answer for this, I'd like to hear it.  I can write all day in my diary or on-line, or churn out academic essays no problem, but when it comes to writing fiction, I seize up.  I start things, lots of things, but have trouble finishing them.  I don't have a cure for the finishing blues (if I did, I'd be off finishing something right now!).  But I do have a few ways to get started.

I read something that makes me want to write.  I find Gertrude Stein's writing useful for this.  Mostly I have no idea what she's on about, but something about the way her work sounds makes me want to start writing myself.  Writing in coffee shops helps, even though that's about the most cliched thing ever.  I watch the people around me, eavesdrop on their conversations, and use them in what I'm working on.

As far as finishing goes, I think I need deadlines, and I'm not sure how to impose them on myself.  I tend to fritter away my time instead.  I have a lot of time on my hands because I'm not working and too much time makes it harder, not easier, to discipline myself.  Instead of doing my own writing, I distract myself with other people's writing - blogs and newspapers online, and now Vox, which is my newest procrastination tool.

I seem more comfortable wanting to write and planning to write than actually doing it.  I think I'm scared of sucking at it and scared to commit to the years of learning and practice that it takes to become a professional writer.   I want confirmation that I can be good at it before I take the plunge.   Of course that's not how it works - I'll have to put up with the discomfort of being a beginner if I want to get good.

A side issue - I have ants in my keyboard - yuck.  Now that it's not raining every day we have millions of tiny ants crawling all over the place.  I wage war on them, drowning them in the sink and squashing them on the bench, but they just keep on coming.

And, a late thought - probably the best writing advice I ever got came from the acupuncturist I used to see in Dunedin.  I was whimpering about my thesis one day, and she told me, "You don't need to spend time analysing why you're not working.  It's not a therapeutic issue, it's a JFDI issue."  I said, "Huh?"  And she said "Just fucking do it."  "Oh," I said.  And I did.  One thesis successfully completed a few months later.  So scratch everything that I wrote before this paragraph and just fucking do it.....