Dealing With Writer's Block (the affliction, not the subfora :P)

I've hit a bad spot of writer's block. I know what I want to write, but it always looks wrong on paper. I can't put what I see into words anymore.

So I need your help to get out of my slump. How do you deal with your writer's block?

I just put myself in the zone and slam through everything. Write until I get to a certain event. I don't even start editing until I have the entire thing down. (or at least, I resist.)

Writing usually doesn't look good when first written down anyway. It has to be edited. Think of stuff you wrote for the first time as being in a "raw" state that needs to be refined.

I decide that I'm going to ignore the fact that I hate what I'm writing and get through it. A crappy first draft is better than no first draft. If I can't get a scene to work, I leave notes about what it's supposed to contain and pick up after it. Or I might go off and write a different scene; they don't have to be written chronologically.

Sometimes writer's block is a sign that something is off in the plot, characterization, or something else. Writing a different scene tends to be good at letting my subconscious churn on that while keeping busy.

Just write anyway.

When I look back on something I wrote while stressed out or whatever, there's often no real difference in quality. It's just my perception that changed.

Imagine that all your readers are watermelons, and continue writing. Watermelons are not going to notice any grave errors in your writing.

Or imagine each complete sentence as an objective in a game, once one is complete you don't go back.

The Fundamentally Funny Fruit strategy. I like it.

Yeah, I prefer the "slam it out anyways" method.

I mean, there's a really good chance you're going to revise it heavily anyways. Just put something down. First drafts aren't supposed to be good. I really can't say it enough, you're probably going to grind what you have into a fine mortary powder to rebuild later. Even my favorite bits usually look like crap after a month or so. Even parts I spent hours trying to perfect the wording for get redone later, so why spend all that time?

Worrying too much about what you're writing for the first draft is like worrying too much that your first house isn't a mansion.

Then just get into the habit of writing every day to get some momentum, because momentum helps a lot (at least for me).

edited 13th May '11 3:27:27 PM by deathjavu

Try taking a break. Relax yourself completely from the stresses of writing and the internet, and go take a walk. Usually you feel stumped your imagination can't seem to flow, so why don't you just look around idly and think whatever. (Red fish blue fish green fish gold fish. Hey, a four-man band of fish!)

edited 13th May '11 5:11:12 PM by QQQQQ

I like to think "What would the characters logically do in this situation, based on their previous behavior?" If the problem is that their logical reaction would derail the plot, either rewrite earlier parts, or accept the derail. (The latter makes my writing significantly less cliched and predictable, which I'd like to think is a good change.)

Awesome. I always hoped there were other people out there who did this.

I myself have never really had a problem with writer's block in the sense of not knowing what to write next, but I've always had a lot of trouble motivating myself to actually write what comes next.

Blurgle flurgle. I never had a problem with writer's block when writing my blog. Why is it only now that I can't bring myself to write one stinkin page?

I got inspired to write a chapter I was having trouble with after reading a fic that could very well be the My Immortal of Gargoyles fanfic. I thought "I can't let Gargoyles fans be subjected to this! I must write something good!" I listened to "Eye of the Tiger", got pumped and started writing.

Writer's Block and Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! go hand in hand for me. When I hit a wall, I'll open one of my other works and bang something out. The problem with that is, I'll get writer's block for multiple works. When that happens, I'll read and reread the last few paragraphs up to the point I get stuck.

edited 16th May '11 8:23:42 PM by KarlKadaver

Seeing the second post gave me a thought on it with the word "refined"

It's not like when you mine iron it is going to be perfect pure iron the first time, with iron you need to mine it, with over half of it being 'junk' or slag, and then you have to purify it, over and over again to make it usable, and then, after much hard work, you get your finished product. Even better if you argument that with other things and make steel, but that is a different analogy for another time.

Your first draft is the mining of the Iron, you need to get something before you can use it, you have to mine (write) before you can do any good with it. Just write! write! write! Don't worry about what you write, just write your characters doing stuff. Once you get past it, you will learn SO much.

I found this out myself when I did NaNo WriMo last Fall. It doesn't even have to be 'canoical' with your actual work, anything that has you writing about your plot and characters, no matter how strange and different than you want, as long as it gets you to write. Then once you learn more, you get to your actual work, and slug that first draft through.

The problem with me is that when I want to write my ideas onto a piece of paper usually the idea would probably look suckish; not what I have in mind. That's probably why I have a fear of writing things down onto paper, afraid that it would suck afterwards, or whatever. Pretty much how some of us are dealing with Writer's Block. Can't think of something good to write either; it would either be bad or make the story too dark, which is not what I really want (I don't usually like stories that are too dark and keeps deconstructing everything. It's just not my style.) Probably that's the reason why my fanfictions became lame after a while and it come to a point I stop writing fanfiction altogether.

I should probably stick to my own fiction, since I have too much of an imagination.

I'd warn Karl that his method is a great way to end up with a villion first paragraphs; you'll tend to write each work until it dead-ends against a difficult part and then do something else, leaving everything eventually abandoned at the hard part. (I know because I do this too.)

I've done this with one of my works already (Lost it in the pile of other works). Typically, what I'll do is I'll pick a work on a given day and tell myself, "Ok, I'm going to work on this one today." What annoys me about my brand of writer's block is I'll think of the beginning and the end, but I got nothing for the middle except random scenes and dialogues. A fellow writer suggested that I write everything down that I think of, but I really can't see me doing that. I fear that it'd be way too disorganized.

Pretty much why I can't seem to put all my ideas on paper. What you said sum everything up about my problem. Perhaps QQQQQ's idea is what I need to get myself out of writers block.

Interestingly, I have a strange sort of problem. I have so many ideas and get most of them down to the extreme that if I were to connect them all together into a story it would make Lord of the Rings look short. The difficult part is figuring out what is important and what isn't and getting rid of the unimportant parts.

I feel ya, my friend. For a work that I published online, I was trying to keep that chapters to about 5-10 pages each, or else suffer the wrath of TL;DR. I was really getting into writing one of my chapters and it turned into 17 pages before I knew it, and I wasn't even half way finished! I ended up spitting it into three parts, each part was about 10-15 pages.