Line #7 Main/HowIWroteThisArticleArticle


1	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/how_to_write_a_how_to_write_book.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:320:This caption explains how to write a caption...]]
3
4	->''"Couldn't think of any lyrics!\
5	No, I never wrote the lyrics.\
6	So I'll just sing any old lyrics.\
7	That come to mind, child."''
8	-->-- '''Music/WeirdAlYankovic''', [[Music/EvenWorse "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long"]]
9
10	When someone is contractually obligated to churn out regular humorous articles, they occasionally reach an inspirational dead end. Sometimes, to deal with this, they write an article about how they can't think of anything to write. This makes such pieces essentially forms of {{Metafiction}} since they typically involve the author ''writing about writing''.
11
12	Creator/StephenFry mentions in the book collection of his articles that every humor writer is allowed one and only one of these.
13
14	Almost always a form of SelfReferentialHumor. SisterTrope to WritersBlockMontage, which is a {{montage\|s}} of an uninspired InUniverse {{creator\|s}} trying and failing to produce something. Compare and contrast ThisIsASong, which is a song that is at least partially about itself. Related to MostWritersAreWriters because RealLife writers often have characters who are writers too, which when gone meta, opens up several possibilities for BreakingTheFourthWall.
15
16	Go to WritersBlock, the general trope for when fictional characters struggle for ideas to put in their work. See also MakingTheMasterpiece, a dramatization of how a creator's magnum opus came to be. Might overlap with {{Padding}}, that extra stuff added to a fictional work purely to fill out time.
17	----
18	!!Examples:
19
20	[[foldercontrol]]
21
22	[[folder:Comic Books]]
23	* ''Comicbook/HowardTheDuck'': An entire issue is about author Steve Gerber's writer's block. So it's essentially a comic issue that illustrates how the creator is lacking ideas for a comic issue.
24	* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'': This is how ''[[FictionalDocument Under The Hood]]'' begins. Nite Owl briefly ponders how to start his {{autobiography}}. He sets to ask his writing virtuoso of a neighbor, telling her that "[he] doesn't from writing a book". That he's got all he wants to tell in his head but doesn't know where to begin. It's only after following Denise's advice, and thanking her for it, that the actual narration starts.
25	[[/folder]]
26
27	[[folder:Fan Works]]
28	* ''Fanfic/ThisTimeRound'': ''[[http://www.ttrarchive.com/missingtheobvious.html Missing the Obvious]]'' was written for a "crystals" challenge on rec.arts.drwho. In it, Daibhid Ceannaideach's AuthorAvatar completely fails to write a fanfic about crystals. It opens with a parenthetical comment that he can probably get away with this just once.
29	[[/folder]]
30
31	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
32	* ''Film/{{Adaptation}}'': It's a film telling the story of adapting a book into the screenplay of what eventually becomes the film you're watching.
33	* ''Film/EightAndAHalf'': As early as TheSixties, Creator/FedericoFellini makes a film about making a film when you've run out of ideas.
34	[[/folder]]
35
36	[[folder:Literature]]
37	* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': In ''The Android'', Marco writes a school paper on the topic of how he hasn't come up with a topic for the paper. Later in the book, it's mentioned in passing that his writing about "the use of rhetoric to obscure a lack of content" got him a B.
38	--> '''Marco''': "A topic will... emerge. I just have to keep writing until I come up with a topic."
39	%%* Creator/DaveBarry does this every so often.
40	* ''Literature/BreakfastOfChampions'': Creator/KurtVonnegut's narration frequently goes off to explain what he was going through when he was writing it.
41	* Belgian novelist Creator/HermanBrusselmans uses this trope on occasion, often as an introduction. The first sentence of ''De kus in de nacht'' (''The kiss in the night'') is as follows: "''As usual I have nothing to say and I will do so [[{{Doorstopper}} for about 600 to 650 pages]], we'll see.''"
42	* ''Literature/TheCityOfDreamingBooks'': This is the subject matter of [[MacGuffin the manuscript]] and it's specifically noted that the book should be a ClicheStorm by all rights. Yet, reading it convinces people that it's the greatest piece of literature ever put to the page.
43	* Creator/UmbertoEco: He had a column in the Italian news magazine ''L'espresso'' where he once wrote an article about how he can't think of anything to write about, but the space needs to be filled, so he's now writing this article about how he can't think of anything.
44	* Hungarian writer Creator/FrigyesKarinthy once wrote an article in which he explains that he should write a humorous article. Yet, he can't because a young man is standing behind him and reads everything he writes.[[note]]Karinthy usually wrote in coffee houses[[/note]]
45	* "[[http://consc.net/misc/moser.html This Is the Title of This Story, Which Is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself]]".
46	* Creator/ChuckTingle's [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin story]], ''Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Physical Manifestation Of My Writer's Block Then Realizing I've Already Found Inspiration By Literally Writing About How I'm Not Inspired''.
47	* Creator/KarlEdwardWagner: "The Slug" is about how creative blockage tends to become TheThingThatWouldNotLeave.
48	[[/folder]]
49
50	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
51	* ''Series/TheStoryteller'': In [[Recap/TheStorytellerE03AStoryShort "A Story Short"]], the eponymous storyteller is [[ScheherezadeGambit forced to tell a new story every day]]. On the last day, due to an outlandish series of events, he doesn't have time to think up a new story, so he tells the story of why he couldn't.
52	[[/folder]]
53
54	[[folder:Music]]
55	* Music/NatashaBedingfield: "These Words" is about the difficulty of writing a love song that really expresses how she feels about the person she's dedicating it to.
56	-->Trying to find the magic,\
57	Trying to write a classic,\
58	Waste-bin full of paper,\
59	Clever rhymes, see you later.
60	* Music/MitchBenn: Benn wrote and recorded an entire album in 24 hours for charity. The last song, "Party Animals Need Not Apply" is about how this SelfImposedChallenge isn't fun and ends with a thrice-repeated line about how he needs to [[{{Padding}} pad it out]] to make the time.
61	* Music/JimmyBuffett: In "Boat Drinks", there's a verse that says, "I should be leaving this climate/I've got a verse but can't rhyme it."
62	* Music/{{Chicago}}: "25 or 6 to 4";
63	-->''"Waiting for the break of day\
64	Searching for something to say..."''
65	* Music/{{Eminem}}:
66	** The hook of "Under The Influence" is Slim telling everyone to suck his dick because he's too high to write a good hook.
67	** "Rabbit Run" is about a rapper struggling to think of things to write.
68	** "Just Lose It" has a section where Slim runs out of lines and starts improvising gibberish.
69	** In "On Fire", Slim claims that he can make his long, indulgent [[BoastfulRap braggadocio verses]] into a song by just adding a "bullshit hook", which he promptly does.
70	** "Guts Over Fear" has a passage in which Eminem admits that, after his CreatorRecovery, he has nothing left to write about.
71	** "Walk On Water" is a song about being unable to meet the expectations placed upon him as a writer, interspersed with the sound of Eminem crunching up his lyrics sheets and throwing them away.
72	* Music/FiveIronFrenzy: "Superpowers", which is otherwise about the difficulties of being a touring rock band, briefly dips into this in its second verse.
73	-->Sometimes I have a deadline\
74	for writing our songs.\
75	Five minutes left to write this one...\
76	la, la la, la la, la la la.
77	* Music/BenFolds: "One Down" is about the fact he's contractually obliged to write 3.6 more songs and he feels conflicted about "turning in a bunch of shit."
78	* Music/TimMinchin: He composed an unusually clean, three-minute long song for pre-{{watershed}} TV appearances which is all about the reasons he needs to write a clean three-minute song.
79	* Music/MorrisMinorAndTheMajors: "Another Boring B-Side" (the b-side of "Stutter Rap") details the cynical process of writing a song that most people will only listen to once.
80	-->It's another boring b-side, another load of tat
81	-->It has no redeeming features, and we're really proud of that
82	-->You're listening to the product of considerable neglect
83	-->But for a lousy one pound eighty, tell me, what did you expect?
84	* Music/GwenStefani: Her hit "What You Waiting For?" is about Gwen's writer's block during the making of her debut solo album, ''Love Angel Music Baby'', and addressed to herself.
85	* Music/TheyMightBeGiants: "Number Three", the third song on their first album, is about burning out after writing only two songs.
86	* ''Music/EvenWorse'': "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long" is about this, with Music/WeirdAlYankovic spouting verse about how he can't think of any lyrics, so he'll just repeat old ones.
87	-->"Couldn't think of any lyrics!\
88	No, I never wrote the lyrics.\
89	So I'll just sing any old lyrics.\
90	That come to mind, child."
91	[[/folder]]
92
93	[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
94	* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': Hobbes ends up writing this story for Calvin after he tries time traveling two hours into the future to retrieve his completed story, only to find it hadn't been written yet. Unfortunately for Calvin, the class loves it, but it makes him look like a laughingstock.
95	* ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'': One series of strips has Jason writing "a running first-person account of the process of writing a nine-hundred-word essay" for school, as part of a bet with his friend Marcus to see who can write the longer essay. Jason wins the bet, but his essay gets a poor grade because it's literally nothing but "This is my fourth sentence. This is my fifth sentence. This is my second paragraph..."
96	[[/folder]]
97
98	[[folder:Radio]]
99	* Creator/TheBBC: Many of the quirkier Radio 4 documentary strands do this, with the narrator explaining the difficulties of production, and sometimes describing (or even recording) arguments with the producer. Often the phrase "This is not the programme I expected to make when I started" is involved.
100	[[/folder]]
101
102	[[folder:Webcomics]]
103	* ''Webcomic/ArthurKingOfTimeAndSpace'':
104	** A semi-recurring theme in one arc is that Arthur hates "can't-think-of-a-joke jokes", but not as much as he hates failing to update his webcomic.
105	** In the space arc, Tristram thinks writing a song about being unable to write a song is "only funny once".
106	* ''Webcomic/{{Qxlkbh}}'': By virtue of being {{Metafiction}}, it naturally has multiple examples.
107	** [[https://qxlkbh.github.io/41 "41: untitled"]] features the [[GuestStrip guest author]] trying to make a guest comic.
108	** [[https://qxlkbh.github.io/82 "82: behind the panels"]] has Andrew, one of the regular authors, attempting to come up with a comic idea.
109	[[/folder]]
110
111	[[folder:Websites]]
112	* ''Website/{{Uncyclopedia}}'': Its [[https://uncyclopedia.ca/wiki/Writer%27s_block article]] on writer's block.
113	* ''Website/{{TED}}'': Tim Urban opens his TED Talk "Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator" with a description of his own last-minute writing of the TED Talk as an example of his process.
114	[[/folder]]
115
116	[[folder:Western Animation]]
117	* ''WesternAnimation/PeteTheCat'': In [[Recap/PeteTheCatS1E2 "Begin to Begin"]], Pete is supposed to be writing a new song for his band, but has writer's block and keeps procrastinating. He eventually ends up writing a song about how he should ''not'' procrastinate and just start writing.
118	[[/folder]]
119
120	[[folder:Real Life]]
121	* An academic journal of psychology once published a scholarly study entitled [[http://www.ericpazdziora.com/best-paper-ever/ "The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writers' Block"]]. Peer reviewers commended the author for showing his results in great detail while being admirably concise. Of course, [[spoiler:everything except the title is blank.]]
122	[[/folder]]
123

Context Main / HowIWroteThisArticleArticle