Writer's Block · 2:19am Apr 20th, 2016
I was looking here and, sadly the author won't read this since they haven't been heard from in over 2 years now. But it brings up a very important point about writer's block. Trying to write makes it worse.
If you want to be a writer, don't ever stare at the paper for hours, writing a word or two. Get up, walk away, stop writing, take up a hobby, go waterskiing, anything but trying to write when nothing's coming out. Yes you want to avoid distracting yourself from writing, if you want to write a story, but sitting there trying to force it will just it harder to write. Even the greatest writer can't write in that situation.
You have a bunch of good ideas, right? It's like you have a big old handful of cookies, in a narrow-necked cookie jar. If you ever stare at the page for an hour straight, it's just like trying to pull your hand out of the jar, without letting anything go. Let monkeys do that; you can do better. Trying harder won't do any good, because it's like trying to clear a drain clog by turning up the water pressure. You're more likely to break something than unclog it.
The key is to reverse the flow, wiggle it back and forth, and that's how you overcome writer's block. It only seems like an impossible task, because you've spent so much effort already, trying to push open the door marked "Pull". But if you give up, and then go back to it, you might actually find the words flow with almost no effort at all. If you go write a bunch of random garbage, knowing you're going to deliberately crumple it up and throw it away, then when you go back to writing your story, it'll be easier than if you just kept trying and trying, and never gave up.
There's no panacea that's guaranteed to make anyone able to write stuff, or if there is I sure don't know it, because I write like four times as slow as I should have to. I only get out as much as I do, because I have so much time to do it, that other people deserve way more than I do. One of these days I'm never gonna be able to write again, because I won't have the luxury of not working 8-5, and I'll be forced to spend all my energy sweeping floors for my employer until I die. So there's no panacea. Some of us are just lucky. Dirt poor and terribly lonely, but lucky.
But panacea or no panacea, you will never be able to overcome writer's block by sitting there staring at it.
That's actually really good advise, since I have been struggling with the dread writer's block as well, as of recent.
Hopefully though, since I'm finally at a details pass for my two chapters of Minty all I need is to sequester myself away from all distractions (since I keep getting distracted by every... last... thing...
)