Whinge

[indri]

I can't seem to write fiction at all at the moment. Every time I put fingertip to keyboard the result is decidedly uninspired. Oh, the individual sentences are OK but I can't seem to get them to hang together into a coherent story. I'm going to have to email Marieki and apologise that her fic is so late.

But I get some pleasure in checking my reader logs. In the last twenty-four hours my website has amused people in Portugal, Edinburgh (anyone I know?), Florida, Ohio. Michigan, Nebraska, Dallas, Vienna, Belgium and the Bay Area.

Anyone got any hints on how to get one's groove back?

Comments

[caille.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Okay, remember the infamous "Smashed" bringing-down-the-house scene? Well, it was apparently a hugely difficult scene for JM. He couldn't get it the way he wanted and was getting frustrated. Legend has it that SMG talked him down. "Do your worst acting ever. Think about something else. Think about breakfast." And lo and behold, lookit what we got.

So. Think about breakfast. Think about Harmony and breakfast. Or think about Hamilton and breakfast. Then do your worst writing ever. Tell me how Hamilton's seed is neither cold nor dead. (That would not go well with thinking about breakfast, but hey, there's your dramatic tension.) And make it longer than drabble, but not by much.

Build any number of anti-Mary and Marty Sues. Then kill 'em.

No outlines, no plans, just a couple of pages of your worst writing ever.

I wonder if this would work for me....

[indri]

That would not go well with thinking about breakfast, but hey, there's your dramatic tension.

Actually, I read your post over breakfast and, yes, you were right about how badly that went with Hamilton's seed. My website's named Blood and Weetabix :)

Thanks for the pep talk. I'll gird my loins, batten down the hatches, and refuse to throw in the towel. May well throw up on the towel, but that's what you get from mixing weetabix with bodily fluids.

Would smooch you, but I'm British-born and repressed.

wonder if this would work for me....

I hope so. Let's find out.

[rahirah]

If I knew, I'd have tracked mine down weeks ago. :P

[indri]

Eh, well here's to at least one of us finding it :)

Your icon is perfect here.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I know it's not what you want to here, but in my experience the only cure for writer's block is time. It just came, eventually it just goes.

Meanwhile, I would advise not ruining your current projects by messing with them when you aren't in the zone. Stick to drabbles or try some short exercises (describe three things at random that you can see from where you are sitting. Write a scene of dialogue between two characters. Now write it again without any dialogue etc.) This might get your writerly muscles moving again, and if it doesn't you won't have done any harm by trying.

[indri]

I would advise not ruining your current projects by messing with them when you aren't in the zone

This is tremendously sound advice -- would that I had followed it in the past! I think the block has cleared up, but when it comes back I will try the sort of exercises you recommend.