eien blue

Well, I stumbled upon this site trying to find help getting out of my little situation, so what better than to make my first post a cry for help?^^.
Let me explain, and hopefully someone here can help me.

I'm writing a short fiction on Alexander the Great. Not about his conquests, but of his love life. Now, I did all my research, I got a plot line and a lot of ideas swirming in my head, but when it comes time to sit down and type... I got nothing.
I don't know if its because I have a deadline for this, or just because I'm subconciously telling myself that I can't write a short story that had any consistency to it. I've never been able to write anything less than 40 pages long, so I have no idea how to tackles this project. Has anyone had a situation like this happen? If so, what steps did you take to get out of it?

suzyq

There's no simple answer to this, as what works for one writer, may not work for another.

I'd say the first thing to do is take your mind off the 'pressure' you've already put yourself under. Perhaps you are worried about writing a good short story. Acknowledge it, but also acknowledge that just becuase you felt that was true of the past, does not mean the same thing will happen again.

Then while you're in that frame of mind, in one sentence describe what your story is about and what happens. Then you do the same thing but in a paragraph. Then your goal is to write what happens and why in a page. Hopefully by this point, you'll be right into your story and not worrying about all those pyschological pressures you've put on yourself.

You could also try a completely different approach. This works really well for some people. It might sound dumb and a bit 'out-there', but keep an open mind and try it anyway. Just slow down your breathing and concentrate on that for 10 breaths - what this does, apart from feeling good, is to change your brain waves slightly. You go from conscious thinking (beta state) to subconscious thinking (alpha state). When writer's talk about getting into the flow and the story writing itself, they are actually in an alpha to delta state (deep subconscious thinking). While you're in this state, acknowledge that you have a fear that you can't write a short story then let it go. Then you tell yourself that it's BS anyway. You can write this. And then you just do it. All it does is put you in a more 'productive' state of mind.

Hope some of this helps!

__________________
Suzy Q
http://www.CreativeWriterWithin.com

eien blue

Thanks you so much! I will definately try that breathing tecnique, if anything, it will at least relax me.

I did a lot of reading about writer's block yesterday , and everything seems to poit out the same things as you suzyq. I'll just try different things like brain storming and writing a bunch of crap and see if I can get anything good out of it. I think I know what my problem is, since is a short story and I have a deadline, I just want to do it perfect from the start, so I'm over critical of everything I write.

Hopefully today will be better.

Thanks again^^