Tag Archives: when the writing isn’t happening

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A Light Bulb Going Out: The Weird Way I Cured My Writer’s Block

29 Monday Jul 2013

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On Friday, I had a bit of a meltdown. It had been a hectic week, I was jealous about the successes my writer friends were posting on their Facebook pages, and when someone honked at me for no reason on the ride home, it was the last small indignity to push me over the edge.

I had been sitting in the downstairs bathroom for about 10 minutes with the lights out, feeling sorry for myself, when my husband poked his head in the doorway and astutely said that this did not seem like normal behavior, and that he had deduced that probably something was bothering me.

Obviously there was more than one problem on my mind that evening, but one of the things that came out in my tearful rant in the bathroom was that I was in the worst stretch of writing my current story: unsure of the ending, doubtful of the characters, hearing the disdainful voice in my head that pops up to suggest I scrap the whole thing. I knew taking time to get productive writing done would make me feel better, but all my inner negativity made it harder than usual to get my butt in the chair and do it.

So I wrote in the bathroom while Andrew made dinner. Silence is good. Privacy is good. Even darkness was good that night (that’s right, I sat in my powder room for 25 minutes typing by the glow of the laptop only!). I realized that in the depths of my self-conscious stretch, what I needed in order to function creatively was to feel like no one would be able to tell if what I was writing was bad. Being in a quiet space where no one could ask me how it was going (or know not to ask by my expression) helped ease my nerves. In the dark, I could even, oddly, pretend the room was truly empty–that I wasn’t even there–and use that to confuse my inner critic into silence. I felt a little silly, but by dinnertime, I had almost 400 words written.

Tonight I’ll be back in my usual spot for writing, but I’m filing away the weird trick of literally shutting myself away and turning off any other distractions–even the lights.

Let me know if you try a dark writing session, or if you have other weird rituals that help you shake off a block!

33 Ways to Stay Creative

06 Monday Feb 2012

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Just a quick one to assure you I am still alive, just adjusting all over again to how to fit homework in with everything else. I borrow tonight’s list of creativity tips from http://www.theworldsbestever.com, a fun and bizarre assortment of inspirations and oddities. A skim down the home page gave me photography, a clock, Lindsay Lohan, hot sauce, striped Oxford shirts, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and cartoon spheres arguing about culture. Quite the grab bag, and while I doubt any one person will enjoy everything, it’s neat to see the sheer breadth of what creativity can offer. Right now, on breath-catching breaks between assignments, I’m reading over:

I’m working on numbers 6 and 33 in particular tonight, trying to remember to 32, and hoping some 9 is in my future. Next up: planning a book!

My NaNoWriMo Theme Song

18 Friday Nov 2011

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One of the things you learn when you’ve written just over 30,000 words in 18 days is that sometimes, you need a little push to get those words on the page. The answer, for many of us? Music. The first year I did NaNo, back in 2007, I was following Neil Gaiman’s blog religiously. He posted a little gem that had made him smile called “Georgette Plays a Goth,” and I fell utterly in love. The bright, unbelievably catchy, nigh-indiscernible song of a waitress who likes to dress like a Goth from time to time had just the right up-tempo perkiness to shake me up and get another couple hundred words out. It is basically my NaNoWriMo anthem at this point: I only listen to it during November, but in November, by gum, I listen the heck out of this song. Ladies and gentlemen, the magic of Tullycraft:

(G-g-g-georgette)

Snooze

18 Tuesday Oct 2011

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I wrote on Sunday, which is good. I’m almost finished with the draft of story I’m working on, which is better. But for the last several work days, I haven’t been able to pull myself out of bed to write.

My schedule hasn’t changed. I’m working the same hours, have roughly the same amount of homework, run the same errands that I have been. It’s just that when the alarm has sounded at 7:05 or 7:15, I’ve burrowed back into the blankets instead of jumping (fine, crawling) out of bed, fresh words on my mind. And by the time I get home after working a full day and making sure I have food in the house or not too many library fines or talking myself into a quick workout, I really want to hang out for a while without doing anything that can be checked off a list.

I’m sorry, I know I’m whining. If it’s important to me to finish this story, I should take half an hour of my evening, sit down, and finish the darn thing. My body, for whatever reason, needs a little more sleep, and I should be reworking my schedule to accommodate both hitting the snooze button and getting a few hundred words written. I’m just irked to hit a bump in the schedule that was working so beautifully.

6 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

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It’s happened, people. I’ve hit a wall. The weird thing is that over the last few weeks, I’ve actually had a spike in writing productivity. I’ve started getting up 15 minutes early to write, and have been churning out as much as 350 words even in that quick little sitting. Combined with some evening writing, I did almost 2000 words last week, not counting blogging. That sounds like the opposite of writer’s block, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’s not so much a block on writing as it is on writing fiction. Every day gets me 24 hours closer to the end of my MFA program, and makes me that much more aware that I need to have a book written in order to graduate (yeah, it’s still a year and a half away. So what?). A book of short stories, polished and thoughtful and linked enough in theme or tone or whatever to nestle harmoniously with each other. It freaks me the heck out. And being freaked out is not conducive to creativity.

The words need to come regardless, though, so here are my top tips for when I’m in a funk. Maybe they will work for you as well!

1. Write something else. Nonfiction works best for me–retelling a story from my life in as engaging a way as I can. I can always change characters or details later to fictionalize it and give it better narrative flow.

2. Read the headlines. News is cool because journalists and editors have already cherry-picked the wildest characters and most intense stories. One way to get a different angle (so you’re not just writing a fictional version of the news article) is to imagine how the story affects a family member, friend, or ex-lover of whoever is in the news.

3. Do something radically different for a day: refuse to drive, paint yourself all over with henna, cross-dress, eat backward (dinner for breakfast, dessert for lunch, breakfast for dinner and lunch for dessert), and so on. Write a story about someone who does that every day. Why do they do it? What problems do they run into?

4. Start a story-writing group with your friends. Assign a genre, a key word that needs to appear in the story (the more incongruous the better), and a deadline. Now all your friends are going to have stories written! Sometimes writer’s block is a matter of getting a solid kick in the pants.

5. Go to asofterworld.com. Click the “fnord” button to go to a random strip. Write the expanded, story version of what the strip says.

6. Write a story using only one vowel. It is possible, and it’s like drinking water upside down to cure hiccups–weird, but effective.

Disclaimer: I have not actually tried #3 myself, but it seems like it would work. If you try it, let me know how it goes!

That’s what I have to offer. How do you beat writer’s block?

Post-Show Blues

27 Wednesday Jul 2011

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Great news–I got an A in Book Design! It took what felt like every spare moment I had (and then some, considering the several evenings I forewent dinner in favor of fiddling with the placement of a title or trying to learn what to do in Illustrator to keep my pictures from getting pixely), but the class is finally over, and yours truly rocked it.

I’m feeling a little adrift, though. When I was in high school doing summer theater productions, all of us in the cast used to dread the end-of-show crash, when we would wander aimlessly around the house, missing the rigid rehearsal schedule we’d complained about half the summer, and wondering what to do with these memorized lines and lyrics and dance steps that no longer had a useful outlet. It was the loss of a little identity.

Sometimes, ending a class is like that for me. I know, HUGE academic geek moment. But it’s true. I throw myself into these courses so hard that for eight or 16 weeks, I identify as a budding book designer or what have you. I’ve been taking it easy (or, you know, as easy as I can) the last two weeks, because I know I need a summer. I went to the pool a few times, actually sat down and watched an episode of So You Think You Can Dance all the way through (so those are the Top 10!), and on Saturday, my family and a representative sample of Andrew’s got together at my parents’ house for a BBQ engagement party. I even got to see my best friend for the first time in about six months (because we live in different states–neither of us is that busy).

I think I’m already gearing up to get some new project percolating, though. I’ve got stuff to revise, I’ve got a tentative idea or two, and I’ve got a “write daily” resolution that’s fallen by the wayside for too long. I’ll try to make time to do some more substantive stuff here when I can, but my real goal is to be able to come back here in not too long with some good writing news, so if I’m quiet, that’s why.