I used to think writer's block was a myth

[Redfox]

Very good points, Nomesque. I have "How to Outwit Writer's Block" by Jenna Glatzer, and she points out that there are a number of legitimate reasons why you might be having trouble writing, including the fact that real life is just too complicated or stressful for you to be able to feel creative.

Do you belong to a writing group or website? I find them tremendously supportive - writing is a terribly lonely activity, and just having other people to grumble to about how things aren't going quite the way you planned can be hugely helpful.

Also, check out all the resources here: http://hollylisle.com/ - some are free, none are expensive. Holly is a great teacher, I've done both her online courses and found them absolutely invaluable. Thanks to "How To Think Sideways" I wrote my first short story in a decade - and sold it! Now I'm putting a manuscript through her "How to Revise Your Novel" course and hope to have it ready to submit in a few months.

Good luck getting your mojo back!

[banjobama]

Have you ever read the book On Writing by Stephen King? I was ready to write when I got done with it and I'm not even a writer. Imagine what it could do for you. Even if you don't like Stephen King, you have to admit he has the writing gig down well enough to hand out advice on it.

[Worldwalker]

On Writing seconded. I don't like Stephen King's novels, but I loved that book. It's like kicking back after work with an author and listening to him tell you about how he got there, and where "there" is, anyway.

[DrZoidberg]

What works for me is allowing myself to write shit. Pick some new voice or some new style and explore it... see how whacky it becomes. Create bizarre scenarios. Create cheesy stories. Explore some new genre, some new style. Write about something you know nothing about. Write about something mundane you know everything about.

Writer's block for me is when I'm bored of my own writing. Thankfully I'm very good at getting myself out of the head space. But its a skill as anything else. I'm sure we all have our own methods for what works best for us.

[Redfox]

The BBC website has an article about creative block at the moment. Mainly about composers, despite the typewriter image at the top of the article, but relevant to writing:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10766308

[MeiLin]

I recently finished "The Artist's Way," and however you feel about that book, one observation Julia Cameron makes is valid: writer's block is fear. Just write through the fear. The morning pages, and just writing other stuff in a notebook longhand (which I used to hate), broke me out of a months-long block and into finishing my novel.

[Kemp]

Distilled down to its essence, not everything is going to work well for everyone. Sometimes, banging your head against the keyboard and hoping that material other than mush comes out does little good, so simply trying over and over might not work. It can even compound the feelings of stress and frustration, making the situation even more difficult.

It's like an insomniac. They can't fall asleep, so they grow more apprehensive about not getting enough sleep, which of course prevents them from sleeping.

In any case, the best way to learn how to overcome it is to try different things and find out what works. Obviously what you have going, with your stressful balance of work, bills, and trouble writing, isn't quite working. Maybe every ten minutes worked without success earns a bite of ice cream. Or something completely different.

[GeoffC]

Try singing. After that you might find that writing is the lesser evil

[Vintage Season]

mjhudston, if you haven't already visited, may I suggest you take a peek at The Friday Challenge? Every week a new prompt is supplied... and you only have seven days to turn in your work. Miss the deadline and you are on to the next prompt, and the seven-day count begins anew.

Here is this week's challenge:

"What is in a name?"

A good title can make or break a story or book. Twilight would never have become so popular had it been called 544 Pages of Over-Wrought Teenage Angst and Sparkly Vampires. Sometimes, a title can even inspire a story. And that's your challenge this week. Take this title and make up the story:

"The Rabbi, the Nun, the Talking Dog, and Everything"

All we ask is that the title make sense within the context of your story.

... which reminds me that I really need to update the "So you think you can write a story?" thread. Between the eBook signing, a few back-and-forth discussions for STUPEFYING STORIES (more details coming soon!), and sending a pile of my other submissions to various magazines, you might say I've been a wee bit busy over the past few weeks.

- M.

[Vintage Season]

Originally Posted by mjhudston

how do people write their stories. do they use story boards, note books or anything else? I tend to make notes in my notebook when they come to me, but as I said nothing of late.

All right, no one else seems to be nibbling at this one, so I'll bite:

Most of my stories begin as a single spark of an idea. Some of these prompts have come from The Friday Challenge: "We Don't Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore," "Olive Drab" and "Armitridge, Olsen & Covey" all started from suggestions by Bruce Bethke and Henry Vogel, although I'd like to think I carried the ideas in directions they hadn't foreseen.

Others are scenarios that popped into my head while mowing the lawn, or washing dishes, or doing some other mundane task when I wasn't giving any deliberate thought to my stories. When this happens, I make a quick note about the idea, but only give myself enough of a lead-in to remember why I thought it was interesting.

After the initial spur, I allow the ideas to bounce around in my head for a few days. A lot of good writing takes place before the pen ever touches paper, or fingers hit the keyboard. By "good writing" I don't mean word-for-word transcription; I do mean figuring out the bare-bones structure of my starting point and a desired resolution, and a few connecting ligaments to help me remember the overall shape of the beast.

Why don't I focus on specifics at this point? A bare-bones structure is essentially the way your brain stores the majority your own experiences. Unless you have an eidetic memory (or the experience was particularly vibrant), most of your recollection is based around connected snapshots, from which your awareness reconstructs events on a case-by-case basis. If you remember an event on a day when everything has gone right, and you are happy, you will probably gloss over any minor flaws you recall about the original experience. Try remembering the same event on a day when your wife yelled at you, your dog threw up in your slippers, and you are slightly hung-over, and every teeny-tiny little imperfection is liable to be magnified out of proportion.

Once you understand the bare-bones structure of your beast, pick a point from which to begin your description... and let it come out as you remember. Attempt to paint a clear enough portrait so that others will understand why the creature was worth capturing. Add tendons and tendrils and fingernails and nostrils and the hair poking out of the ears as you go, if you remember them as you work through the first draft, but don't be afraid to go back and add important details if you remember them later.

Every now and then, stop, and read everything that you have written, out loud. You will discover, if you didn't already know, that the human voice has a powerful cadence, and doing so may show you which words should be added, or reveal others that should be left out.

Does any of that help you? I hope so.

Now, I need to get back to writing.

- M.

[Redfox]

Originally Posted by DrZoidberg

What works for me is allowing myself to write shit.

(...snip...)

I'm sure we all have our own methods for what works best for us.

Exactly. I've tried the "writing any old crap" method, and it doesn't work for me. I can write drivel until the cows come home, but it doesn't feel creative or worthwhile. Note that this is different from "writing a really rough first draft", where I focus on just getting the ideas down on the page and don't worry that I'm using a gazillion adverbs, etc.

For me, I have to go away and do something completely unrelated to writing for a few days or weeks - usually gardening - and wait for the urge to write to become irresistible. If you're really burnt out, it could take months.

If OTOH the muse doesn't come tapping on your shoulder eventually, you're probably not cut out to be a writer.

[GeoffC]

anyone tried doodling on a large scrap of paper - mind-mapping-like in order to capture thoughts etc ?

[Valmore Daniels]

Writer's block happens a lot. I do the same thing as if I encounter a road block - go around it. Write something else for a little bit - a poem, a letter, a short story. I find that if I do that, it builds up my creative juices and I can get back to the main writing.

[jaxx6166]

OP asked "How do you write," which sounds suspiciously like "where do you get your ideas."

I write with whatever is available to me at the moment. I've got notebooks, sticky paper, napkins, cereal boxes, or whatever else happens to be handy.

I tried to keep one specific notebook for writing ideas. I just found it again the other day. It was dusty and had things dated 2k7. How many stories have I written from that: A big fat zero.

When I attended the Superstars seminar with KJA, his last lecture was for improving productivity. For those of you who don't know, KJA is pretty much a whore. He's got so much going on at any one time that I think he may be a direct contender for MoeJoe's writing output.

One of my favorites was: "If the bathroom is dirty, you must write."

Basically, don't put off until tomorrow that which can be accomplished today. Make a game out of it. If you're banging your head against the keyboard, then you're not having fun. And if you're not having fun, then you may as well be pissing on your shoes.

Keep your mind active. That's the best advice. If something isn't working, or if something isn't coming out the way it should, then write something that is. But, for the most part writer's block is a myth. Stories are real. People are fake.

A dentist doesn't get dental block. Imagine if you went to your doctor's office and sat down with the good doctor. They say to you: "I just don't feel like diagnosing your hammer toe today. You see, I'm having a medical block."

That wouldn't work very well, would it?

Just move on. Look at your story with new eyes, take it out of context. There's something there that isn't working. It's like you're driving down a rural road and all of a sudden see a massive roadblock, you can't go forward. The only way out is to backup and find a different way through the woods.

[Steven Lake]

ROFL! Don't feel bad. I struggle with writers block a lot. And even though I can usually pound out a complete novel in 2 weeks to a month, that doesn't mean I don't struggle with writers block along the way. Now I rarely go through 18 month blocks, but most of the time when I do go through long droughts, it's because I'm either A) overthinking the situation, B) not familiar enough with my characters, C) not familiar enough with the world, or D) doing a scene I don't totally understand yet.

Take book 3 of my Earthfleet series. (BTW, this is spoilers for anyone who hasn't read book 3 yet, so just be forewarned) In the scene where Command One gets attacked, I struggled for the better part of two weeks to get through that one single chapter which made up the total initial scene. I especially struggled with how best to portray Sarah, given who she is and her relationship to Mike. The worst case of writers block I've suffered so far involves book 3 of my Land of the Lions series (Lion on the Water). That book got shelved in May of 2008 and is still on the shelf, not because I don't have time for it (personally, I'd love to be able to set everything else aside and finish it), but rather because the story won't come together for me.

So, alas, it sits right now until my mind can get back into the game and start working on the idea again. But hey, it'll happen eventually.