writer's block

[Jeff]

isn't fun

[url=http://imdb.com/title/tt0042593/]Mildred Atkinson: It must be WONDERFUL to be a writer!
Dixon Steele: [sarcastically] Oh, thrilling![/url]

[Seamus OBlimey]

Stop trying..























Well, it worked for me.

[brainpanhandler]

A non-negotiable deadline always motivated me to crash through. No one but you has to read the drivel. Your probably too hard on yourself. Who do you imagine as a critic when you imagine a critic? Now picture them in their underwear and go write.

[Sid Hatfield]

Always helps to switch up.
Speaking as an unsuccessful novelist, if I'm blocked, I try to at least maintain a writer's discipline. I'll write anything. Knock Knock jokes, bad poetry, whatever. Just keep writing. I work in fiction, so to get the grease going, I'll write a "term paper". I pick a thesis, do research and write a few drafts. I never intend to show it to anyone. Maybe it would help if you did the same. You focus primarily on non-fiction. Try writing short stories or poetry. Whatever. Just to get the juice flowing. The more hideous the finished product the better.

And exercise, exercise, exercise. Walks, weights, anything active. If you have kids, hang with them. Play with your wife.* Get active and demystify the writing experience. And by all means, GET AWAY FROM THE DAMN COMPUTER. Too easy to hide.

Just a suggestion.

* if your single, get drunk and pick a fight! It helps to lose.

[compared2what?]

Jeff --

I don't write well now, and haven't for a long while, but for years I did pretty close to nothing else, if only because even on my best days, I had to go through a few shallow cycles of sub-clinical writer's block and release before getting enough text down to regard the work as a foreign entity that was sufficiently separate from myself to know whether it needed to be addressed ruthlessly or respectfully before being banished from my life forever. It was fucking exhausting. So I feel ya.

You probably know all the rest of this already, but in case you don't:

You have exceptional gifts that can neither be lost nor taken away from you, even if you never write another word for public consumption, because, among other things, one of them is that your integrity as a writer is not discrete from your integrity as a human being. Which is as it should be for people who are passionate about what they create, the world in which they live, and the relationship between the former and the latter. But which is also hell to live with. Plus, you write about topics that are important to you, and that's difficult even for hacks.

But it shouldn't be really personally painful, and if it is, put it aside and remind yourself that your responsibilities don't include setting your standards so high that they can't be met without pain. And also that you, Jeff, the person, have integral value that is not defined by what you write. It's actually and emphatically the other way around.

You also simply might at the moment not have much to say, which is fine. I guarantee that sooner or later something will engage your interest, stimulate your mind, and your writing will follow. Also, and finally, if you know any good editors, talk to one. That's actually the best advice I have to give, and I'm only placing it so low because being a good writer's editor and proud of it has been out of fashion for so long, I'm not sure that there are any left. But even if there aren't, the principle that the best way to get your thoughts out of your mind is by talking incoherently to someone who is capable of perceiving that what you have to say is not in fact incoherent, just really badly wrinkled from having been packed too long and stored under pressure still applies. Then one or both of you can do some ironing and chores will be done. Hoop-la.

Take it easy on yourself. Writing is difficult, and that's it's fault, not yours.

[erosoplier]

I'm not a writer, but I am an expert on writer's block. I suffered from it for years while attending uni, and it only eased off when I stopped trying (just as Seamus noted - cluey lad).

In hindsight, I think I was trying to write what other people wanted me to write, in the style they wanted, for the purposes they stipulated, and deep down I had not accepted those terms. A recipe for non-performance.

I'm reminded of one of Clarissa Pinkola-Estes's handed-down sayings: the wolf who cannot howl will not find its pack. If you can't, or aren't allowing yourself to use the words and the voice that you need to use, that you need to use, then things may not flow, or things may turn out mediocre.

I've only really had some minor success with writing (by my standards) since I've started messing about on the internet. And that's been because I've had the freedom to tackle issues I'm interested in at the level I find appropriate, not at the level others might find appropriate.

Another saying which I'd like to throw in here (I forget who said it - Francis Bacon or someone) is "how will I know what I think unless I try to write it down?" I've been amazed at where I've ended up, just by picking up a little point and trying to say what I had to say about it.

And finally, I'm discovering that writing is quite hard work. That's been a bit of a bummer to discover.

[sunny]

Perhaps your perspective and interests have changed and you are still trying to fit into an old familiar pattern? There has been some indication that this is the case for a little while now.

Don't sweat it, go where your heart takes you.

Love that movie btw. Old Bogey sure did a mean angsty he-man.

[brainpanhandler]

One little trick that sometimes works to unstick things...

Try to transcribe from memory as perfectly as you can a passage that you have written. At least some of the changes from the original will have bubbled up from your subconscious. Now compare the two passages. Where did your subconscious want to take you? Experiment with different times of day. Vary the length of time between reading a passage and trying to write it from memory.

Don't look down.

[lunarose]

hello everyone - i don't write (obviously!) but do paint, draw, design jewelry and clothes, that type of thing. last time i was dried up i started baking a lot, and it really helped. you're making something, taking your mind off your troubles, it involves a certain amount of choice, but you just eat it in the end so it doesn't matter for posterity - low comittment. it helped free things up, along the lines of some of the other suggestions here.

best wishes. being blocked sucks.

[judasdisney]

Corpses are no longer decaying in many German cemeteries. Instead, the deceased become waxen, an uncanny process that has become so rampant it can no longer be ignored.

[see link hidden in text below]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

There is an ultimate solution for writer's block, but before I describe it, there is also a Faustian problem to be negotiated.

I am not the Devil, offering a bargain.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Our original inspiration for writing was not to be a writer, not to please an audience, but if (you) have writer's block, then it has become an obligation and a loss of self-enjoyment, a loss of the sense of mission that (you) have a torch to pass onto the next generation in this mortal world. Instead of having a surreptitious and secret investigation/travel into a mystery. Having an audience of people here, offering advice and watching, adds an extra implicit source of pressure to write.

With writer's block or even finished & corrupted product, we are sometimes becoming a hostage to the impulse to please others.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Your journey is not our business.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The ultimate solution for writer's block is the sense of mission and purpose that comes with recognizing two important matters:

(1) You are soon dead. You don't have time for writer's block. This recognition is also a cure for depression, which is related to writer's block. Death, time, and damnation, realign your perspective on your limited time. All of the sands that are unfairly slipping away are ... all that (you) have. You pass along your torch. Or you don't. The thread is ripping, the knot is slipping.

(2) Except for one other thing that (you) have: (You) and only (you) possess a key that turns a lock in the world. Who else can make sense of the data? If you don't do it, nobody else will. In most cases, nobody else can. But you still can't be writing for the audience's sake. Only for the community of the dead.

On the other hand, if you never write another word, that's fine. You can vanish, never to be heard from again, walk away, and no-one ever knew why. But they never knew you anyway. And your journey is not our business.

R. I. P. Jeffrey Wells. We never knew him. It was none of our business anyway. Nobody knows anybody. In the immortal motto of Ice Cube: "Fuck all y'all."

[Joe Hillshoist]

Or you could just try writing stories that make your kids laugh.

[Sweejak]

Yeah, but you're a killer collagist.

[Jeff]

Thanks, everyone, for their wisdom. It's helping.

[MacCruiskeen]

From Alan Garner's collection of essays and lectures, The Voice That Thunders (1997), p. 226:

It was the Summer Solstice of 1983. The last piece of original work that I had written, The Stone Book Quartet, was finished in the summer of 1977. Six years had gone by in silence. There had been nothing to add. "When may we expect the next novel?" said my publisher of the day. "When it's ready", I said, and got on with not writing.

Fortunately for my nervous system, I had never given much credence to the notion of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait."With The Stone Book Quartet, I had emptied my well, and nothing could be done until the water table was restored. And that is where I was at the Summer Solstice of 1983, until 2:30 p.m., when the well became a gusher. [...]

Garner, now 73 years old, is an extraordinary writer, and one I think you'd find you have an affinity with. There is what I suppose you could call High Weirdness in every one of his works, but also a vehement aversion to oversimplification. 'Rigorous intuition' would be a very apt summary of his working methods.

The website devoted to his life and works has some excellent articles and interviews:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon ... dent1.html

[FourthBase]

Get stoned out of your ghourd, and drink a pot of coffee. Do not sit down in front of a keyboard or pad of paper. Pace back and forth and just think about stuff. Whenever you have a little eureka moment, lean up against something and jot down the gist of it. If you get bored with that, go for a long walk around your neighborhood and take a dictaphone with you (or use your cell phone to leave messages for yourself, which winds up looking way more normal than a dictaphone).