• Member Since 19th Jun, 2012
  • offline last seen January 3rd

xjuggernaughtx


Only mostly dead.

More Blog Posts688

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  • 122 weeks
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    The image in question.

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  • 173 weeks
    Hindsight Hilarity

    Been a minute since I've been here, and I decided to read my last for blog posts to see what was going when I was around last.

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  • 198 weeks
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    11 comments · 522 views
Apr
11th
2014

Writer's Block · 4:05am Apr 11th, 2014

You know, I think writer's block is such an interesting idea. I see people complain about it here all the time in groups. They say that they start a story and then they just can't think of what should come next. To me, this is an odd approach. I really don't sit down and write unless I have a skeletal outline of where I'm going at the very least. I always wonder why they don't just bang out an outline.

Maybe it's the same thing, though. If anyone who reads my blogs gets writer's block, I'd love to hear more about it.

I don't get writer's block. When I sit down, stuff just comes out. In retrospect, some of that stuff might not be very good, but it never fails to make its way onto the page. I just write, sometimes knowing that it's not very good, just to get it out. I go back and fix/delete later. It seems like everyone could do this to me, but I'm sure there are lots of people that think everyone can hit a baseball. I can't to save my life. I really, really suck at hitting baseballs.

What I do get from time to time is a sort of writer's melancholy. That's what I'm dealing with right now. I have all these ideas, but I just don't really want to sit down and write them out. I feel tired, and it seems like it will be so many words to get them out of my head. I know it's going to take hours and hours and hours of work, and they are just mentally draining to think about. I'm acutely aware of this when I write with Steel Resolve. I tell him that I want to write a quick little scene and then I'm just typing and typing and typing, all the while trying to tell him that I promise I'll be wrapping this up soon and that it's all going somewhere. I know going in that I'm going to be writing way more than I plan to, and the thought of that fills me with a weird amount of dread. Months of re-writing, editing, and re-working lay ahead every time.

It doesn't help that I have someone one in my office now. That kind of kills my writing trance dead. Without that kind of zoned out state I fall into, I feel apathetic.

So I have a chapter of Cheerilee's Thousand all outlined in my head, but I've been lagging (sorry, Metool Bard!) on getting it done. I also need to finish up the next chapter of Taking a Job for Granite, since I've let that sit way too long. Both of these things bother me constantly. Part of my brain is screaming at the other part to get to work, and the other part is sullen and resentful at being told what to do.

It will pass. It always does. But for the time being, it's not all that fun. That's the curious thing about all of this: Writing is both highly rewarding and painful at the same time. Well, generally not at the same time, but they pendulum rapidly. Now, we are at the end of the arc, and we will swing back to positive soon. I look forward to that. All it will take is for me to break through the mental barrier. I just need to sit down and actually write for a while. The words will come, and I will like them. I'll feel pleasant and invigorated. I know this.

Dread still fills me, though. It's such an odd thing.

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Comments ( 16 )

What I do get from time to time is a sort of writer's melancholy

This. This is such a great term for it. Almost like Writing Doldrums

1999472 Writing Doldrums is a great phrase. I totally feel like that. Just at see with not a breath of creative air. I have a full hold filled with ideas, just not the will to take them on a voyage.

This reminds me a lot of that quote from Ernst Hemingway: "There's nothing to writing. You just sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

I also quite understand the idea of writer's melancholy. I usually get it when I realize that a chapter that I wrote earlier doesn't mesh with where the story is actually going once I actually sit down and start writing it from the dribs and drabs of ideas in my electronic notebooks.

I used to have writer's block quite often, actually. But now I have the opposite. Too many stories wanting to come out and only a small amount of time to get them down through my keyboard before they shift. Thank goodness for cross-platform note taking apps.

I'm not sure what changed.

I always wonder why they don't just bang out an outline.

I manage to get outlines out, but even with them it's still a challenge to translate them into more descriptive words. Now I'm completely working on fixing this problem, though I admit I've found it way easier to just wing it; just start writing the story and fix it as you go.

1999482 What I don't get is the "What should happen now" thing. I mean, if I'm writing a scene, I just logically follow the characters from one thing to the next. I'd never not know what Rainbow and Applejack would do when running from a cragodile in the Everfree Forest. I'd just have them react against each other and eventually we would reach a conclusion.

That's what I struggle to understand. At what point would a writer look at there stuff and not be able to come up with a single interesting thing for that character to do or say?

When it comes to meshing, I guess I don't worry about it. I just follow the story. Taking a Job for Granite is wandered far, far away from where it was supposed to go. So did Diary of a Pliant Tyrant. I just let my brain do its thing and then I fix it up later if necessary. I guess it depends on how crazy your chapters deviate.

1999486 What I do is come up with a basic idea of how I want the story to go. Then I start writing and my brain completely ignores that and goes in some direction that I didn't expect. I just follow my brain at that point and try to keep it on some sort of logical course. Usually, I can find a balance between keeping my original ideas and whatever crazy crap my mind has decided to pull on me. I don't slavishly hold to my outline, but I do try to get the major points in there somewhere.

1999492

That's what I struggle to understand. At what point would a writer look at there stuff and not be able to come up with a single interesting thing for that character to do or say?

I don't think it's quite so simple as this. Perhaps for some, or a lot of those with writer's block it is, but when I used to get it... It was because there was too much choice, and boiling down the choice to one action was always hard for me when I first started writing. Now, it's much easier for me to get behind the wheel, as it were, and see what's ticking. Not that I don't still suffer from having to make a choice, but it's easier for me to assimilate everything that's gone on before.

When it comes to meshing, I guess I don't worry about it. I just follow the story.

For some of my stories, this is the case for me. Mayor Mare and Buck that! both just kinda happened and they went where they wanted and ended when the story was over.

But for others, like Mare in the Moon, I started writing the story with a specific purpose in mind, a specific story that I wanted to tell. That's not something I have a lot of experience with, so it's taking me longer to put it together and get the chapters ready. I have about 15 pages of ideas that I may or may not use and probably another 20 or 30 pages of notes before I'm done.

1999511 Hmmm. Paralyzed by too many choices. That's something that I hadn't really considered. I'm unusually decisive, so that doesn't really happen to me very often, but now that you mention it, I do see it a lot. It makes me think of all the times my friends and I would want to go out to eat and they'd waffle, taking forever to figure out a place to go. Eventually, I'd just pick for them and we'd go out. I was always mystified as to why they could just pick a damn place to eat. I wonder if your writer's block was sort of like that. Not a lack of ideas, but a kind of mental log jam.

1999521

I wonder if your writer's block was sort of like that. Not a lack of ideas, but a kind of mental log jam.

Probably so. I have a jumpy brain as it is. I don't think I'm a bad writer because of it. I just write differently, and I've learned to harness that for random, quirky comedy.

I still have yet to buckle down on it for fics longer than a chapter or two or take more than a couple hours to conceptualize and finish. However, I am getting better. Note-taking has helped me immensely because I can look back on my thought process and see what I was thinking at the time. It helps me get back into that same mindset and the more I take notes, it seems, the less I need to refer back to them. Not sure if that makes any sense.

1999549 Oh, yes. It makes perfect sense because I'm absent-minded. If I don't write things down, I forget them. I usually have extensive notes on ideas that I think are worth pursuing.

I just then, um, ignore the notes and go off on a bunch of tangents… :ajsleepy:

1999550

I just then, um, ignore the notes and go off on a bunch of tangents… :ajsleepy:

I don't quite see it like that. For me, notes are a way to test out to see if an idea works. I write it down, come back to it, and if it works I get back in that mindset. If it doesn't, the "New Note" button gets clicked and off I go again. I see my notebooks as a garden. I plant notes as seeds, weed out the bad ones and tend to the good ones (for my longer fics.)

Editing is like that for me too, honestly.

So I have a chapter of Cheerilee's Thousand all outlined in my head, but I've been lagging (sorry, Metool Bard!) on getting it done.

It's cool. :raritywink:

Truth be told, I don't usually get writer's block, either. Sure, there are times when I wonder what will happen next, but I always have a basic outline in mind. I also like writing through stream-of-conciousness and in real time (rather than in advance), so my chances of getting writer's block are pretty slim.

Actually, now that I think about it, I believe I only encountered writer's block a total of one time on this site, and that's only because I didn't want to end up retreading a previous scene in the story I was working on. :applejackunsure:

I feel like I have a never-quite-ending case of writer's block. I have a suspicion that it's mainly due to a lack of confidence at having never been satisfied with 95% of what I write, subsequently making me even less confident. A sort of cruel chicken-and-the-egg thing.

I'll have a vague idea for something and start writing out the first chapter with incredible ease, but once I've reached the end of that chapter, I'm lost. So I sort of go back to the drawing board and say to myself, "Okay, let's come up with an outline and see how we can fit this chapter I've written into it". But I never seem to be able to come up with an outline. (This, for instance. I'm super frackin' happy with it, aside from the fact that I have almost no idea where I want it to go.) Either that, or I have a very general idea of how I want a story to go, but I don't know how to get it there. Basically, the opposite of the previous scenario.

Like I said before, perhaps I just don't have quite the motivation I need to really work hard on these things. I think at some point my subconscious got into a rut that I never got out of, and therefor I feel hopeless when it comes to writing because I know I am in that rut. A vicious cycle.

This is, by the way, why I've neglected to get back to you on our story collaboration, even after all this time. What's it been, over seven months? I really, really want to write a great story – the couple things I've written in the past that I've been happy with feel so rewarding, and I do like writing – but I just fear that as soon as it comes down to it I won't be able to do anything. Come up with ideas or figure out how to flesh out those ideas. It saddens me every time I think about it, too; the outline you gave me sounded like a recipe for pure awesome ("Red Tapeworm", seriously), but I was always too nervous to do anything about it. Too nervous of coming to you to begin writing it and then get outclassed by you, whose natural talent seems to be coming up with ideas, the opposite of whatever I am.

Basically you make me feel incompetent and I don't want to bore you with my incompetence. Sounds melodramatic as hell, but it's the truth.

Sorry for the mass unload. You asked for insight from people with writer's block, but I think I might have spewed more than was necessary.

2002338

Hey, you don't need to be intimidated by me. I barely know what I'm doing myself. I had the same nerves writing with Steel Resolve. I was nearly sick with nerves when we had to get on that first Gdoc together and start writing. I wondered if I would have any good ideas at all or if I would just be this useless name attached to the story. Turns out, I had plenty of ideas and it's worked out.

I wouldn't have asked if I didn't have faith in your ability to come up with good ideas.

But my suggestion to you is if you can bang out a good chapter, but don't know where to go from there, just write a 3,000 word one-shot. It's the advice that I always give to new filmmakers. Why try to make a whole movie when you are learning. Just try and make a really entertaining four minute short.

That's what I originally did with Cheerilee's Thousand. Each chapter was exactly one thousand words. I had to get in, develop the concept, and get out quick. No room for fluff or poor decisions. It had to be very tight. So that's what I would do if I were you. Just shoot for a concept that you can develop in a small amount of words so that the time investment isn't heavy. Pinkie Pie tries to hide a balloon in a present to give to Twilight, but the box keeps floating to the ceiling. How does she deal with it. Fluttershy locks herself out of the cottage and is trying to get a cranky Angel Bunny to open the door. Octavia is trying to practice, but Lyra keeps singing over her next door. Anything that you can work on for two hours and be done. I think going for multi-chapter stuff at the beginning is very tough. I have a tough time with it now. Not that I'm a prolific author or anything, but I have a few things under my belt.

But I think we all feel incompetent. I sure do. I'm always terrified to sit down at the keyboard because I'm worried that this will be the day that it all turns to crap, but I go on and do it. I'm almost always relieved to be wrong, though I've had a few tough sessions that didn't work out. I'm just now beginning to feel like I belong as a writer and that I'm not going to be exposed as some pretender.

Yeah, I rarely have problems with writer's block. I have too many ideas, so if I struggle with one, I focus on another until I can come back to the former. If I don't know what to do, I wait until I get some inspiration. That's all I need. When I'm feeling it, when I really think about what should happen, I usually have a good idea.

It's usually more of melancholy thing for me.

I confess I do have a few where I honestly know where it needs to progress, but can't figure out how to get it there. Normally I know. I can't shut the characters up if I have them together and I know why they're together and what they want. It's all about thinking about my characters and their motivations, which should be driving the plot. They should all feed into one another like a cycle, vicious or otherwise. :trollestia:

Usually if I can't figure it out, then I'm missing some key ingredient and I have to find that first. Typically it's what the character actually wants.

2002338
OMG that chapter. I kind of skimmed it, I really should be doing other things, but I love this concept. Seriously. Hrmmm.

If you need some ideas, maybe you need to develop the bull into a proper character? Who is he really? Where did he come from? Do Applejack and Big Mac know him? Have they dealt with him in the past? When they were foals or after they got older? How do cows and bulls really live in the world of Equestria? We barely know.

Is there anyone else that AJ and Big Mac can call on to help deal with this guy if they don't have what they need? Will they get a hold of Fluttershy or Rarity or Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash or Twilight? Is he married? Does he have a wife who might chastise him for picking on a bunch of foals and for eating hay that isn't theirs?

I wanna get to know this guy. He's a great character in the making. I think that's what you need. I don't know him that well yet but by golly do I want to! And you should be proud of this. Please, please, please, in the name of Celestia, you must finish this some day. Maybe not today, but someday! :pinkiehappy:

2002524
We're all pretenders here. I think that is some very good advice. I have so much trouble writing short stuff and keeping it short. I think I need to take a few concepts and force them to be small and fluff. But I've got enough to work on as it is. I don't really want to divert myself. :unsuresweetie:

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