JMStone

It happens to the best of us! Just wondering how you all cope when that horrible plague falls upon you, hehe.
For me I pick up some really good books (one's I've already read and love, or something new) and that usually helps a lot. Movies are great for inspiration sometimes too. One movie that always makes me want to write and is, coincidently, my favorite movie is Children of Men. It is pretty dark, though.

Didn't know if anyone out there had some weird/unique way to get over writer's block- or if you did similiar things like me.

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Monkuta

I watch TV. It's relatively mind-numbing so when I turn off the television, my mind is pretty refreshed. At that point, I just keeping thinking and it tends to flow easier. Watching TV while you write also works sometimes too.

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Monkuta's Favorite Quotes: "Time is our greatest teacher. Unfortunately, it kills most of its' pupils." - Louis Hector Berlioz; "Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings." - Anonymous; "The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on." - Robert Bloch; "Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway." - Anonymous

Judith Tramayne

Doesn't happen to me -- there are absolutely too many interesting things to write. But I do have a technique when I'm writing Fiction.

I go back and edit what I wrote the day before. It gets me in the mood of writing again the next morning. Change a phrase, use a better word, put a comma where it's needed and pretty soon, I'm hammering out the next pages needed.

Even works on the non-fiction ebooks I write.

What this does is flips the switch and puts you in your alpha state where the words flow and time stands still.

Judith

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Mike C

No, it doesn't. Professional writers, and those that develop a professional attitude to their writing, don't get blocked. When you're expected to turn out a novel a year - plus book reviews, articles, columns, and whatever else a writer needs to do to earn a full-time living - you don't get blocked, or you go hungry. A proffessional writer I know on a board elsewherewas recently required by her publisher to make some major revisions to her third novel at short notice. She didn't whine or get angsty, she just sat down and wrote 16,000 words in a week. Job done.

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Joe Moore

Mike is correct. There is no such thing as writer's block in professional writing. It is the common fall-back excuse of non-disciplined amateurs.

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flashgordon

I would agree, I have to write stuff on deadlines all the time. I may not feel "inspired" to do the work, but I crank it out and go over it to make sure it is up to par. One trick I use is to have several projects going at once, that way when I get "blocked" on one I can switch gears and work on the other. This way the ball keeps rolling....

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starseed

I used to get blocked a lot, when I wrote as a kid.
Now I realize that was because I would just write without doing any planning or development or research ahead of time, so Id write myself into a corner so to speak. Also, back then I didn't know how to be committed, and as others have said, I do think its sort of an excuse.

Now, Ive already planned out my whole story (not every detail, but all overall plot points). There is a lot of room to develop and change whats needed, but I have the feeling of the story I want to portray and its main moments already set in my mind. This makes the writing fun to work on (no stress really, now the writing is the fun part), and if I start to get confused about what is going on or where to go from there, I can go back to my outline and my character development notes and spend some time thinking them over.

On days I don't feel particularly inspired, I still force myself. Not to write, but just to sit down and begin writing. Usually if I do that, my characters just start doing things on their own, and my mind almost feels like my fingertips have a mind of their own, typing out a story for me to read. I love that about writing, I truly feel I create my characters and they guide me, more than the other way around.

Also, I love music, and always have music on while writing. Just different songs that inspire me, and different ones for different moods, depending on what is going on in my story during that particular time.

Hope that helps!

lilacstarflower

Second that. Its a neat psychological trick - you get stuck at something and chew it over until your exhausted with it and you get no where; you get stuck and take a break and focus on something else an idea will hit you from nowhere. (although that's completely untrue because the subconscious works ALL the time)

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Joe Moore

That's a great trick I learned years ago. I've invested in a large collection of movie scores (not soundtracks with distracting lyrics) and converted them all to MP3. Dramatic scores can really help set a mood as you write, and put your mind in the right zone.

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lilacstarflower

A personal favorite of mine is Le Onde - so haunting and you really do feel like something is lost or dying when you listen to it

Music really is great to stir the emotions

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Noirllyn

I get "clogged" more than "blocked", but that's an entirely different ordeal.

Usually I'm very affluent, and even when I think I'm getting "blocked", I'm not really in the classical sense. I can always work on something; if I can't write a poem, I can write a short story, if I can't write a short story, I can write an essay, if I can't write an essay, I can write a novella, so on. If it's not coming of age, it's romance, if it's not romance, it's historical fiction--you get the picture.

I can always work on things. Getting things started and finishing them, however... those levers get a bit stuck for me at times.

Things I've done and do to help me "finish things up" better:

• Sign up for extracurricular writing classes (Community colleges, adult education, whatever suits your fancy; you can take classes in "creative writing: general", "poetry", "short story", "expository writing", so on depending upon what you desire--the point is to garner more deadlines.)
• I enter just about every contest I see that I qualify for (Scholarships, fellowships, anything I find--even if I "don't think I'm going to win", even if I don't really care if I win because the prize is stupid, even if I "don't -do- sci-fi", I still put the deadlines on my calendar, prepare the envelope, write the thing and send it out.)
• Started and write for local "zines" (It might not impress anybody for a group of kids to self-publish a large packet of op-eds, wistful news stories or over-written features from time to time, but having the extra project on hand helps to accumulate more deadlines and build one's portfolio--plus, when you're writing to your neighbors and peers, you know for a fact that people are reading it.)
• Freelance (Even if you don't think you're ready, look around, pick out a couple publications that interest you, set yourself on them, prepare the envelopes, mark personal deadlines and any actual deadlines on the calendar and go for it. There are many benefits to it beyond simply acquiring more deadlines.)

Then again, if you don't respond to the concept of a deadline, none of that will help you out.

You're probably more concerned with "getting started" on things. These are a few things I do:

• Ask other people for story ideas (This is when I have a deadline for something "open choice" and I don't know what to make my short story or memoir or poem about. Typically I reject EVERY single idea people give me [I thank them, though.]. But in reviewing a thousand things I don't want to write about, I usually come up with a great story I do want to write, and can't help, but to write.)
• Yet again, sign up for classes (Teachers usually have techniques or topics they want you to "try out", and it may seem annoying at first, but some of the best poems I've ever written were based off of classroom activities. The best early-childhood memoir I've written is actually the result of an activity taken write from a textbook.)
• Buy "writing exercise" books or borrow them from the library. (I grew up on these. I have the advantage of getting these books for free [My mother is an English professor.], but I know for a fact that there are many books available for decent prices on Amazon. It may seem totally stupid to sit there and give yourself assignments, but for a lot of people, it's easier to write when an assignment is given to them. If you buy the book rather than going to a class, you can skip over things that just don't work and move onto something that really gets your engine started. You can also find different writing exercises on the web for free.)
• Reread things you've written before. (I've often done everything to shut a story down other than move it to the "recycle bin", only to later go back to it when I was crunching for a deadline and realize that it would be fantastic if I'd just change a few little things and expand it. I'm in the habit of rereading stuff just about every time I sit down to write. I always reread when I am continuing the same story, and I usually try to reread similar things when I'm starting something new. Often I'll realize that things are so related that they can be combined [I managed to turn three short stories into one novella just by changing the names of a few characters and it fit together as if it'd been written as one unit.].)
• Just start writing. (Usually when I do this, my logical brain kicks in and says "This is a bunch of gobbleydeegook, you can't sit around and write crap like this.", so it'll take over and make a little essay. Then my creative mind might sober up and be like "Oh... what are you doing... no... don't do that... it'd be more interesting if you did it this way..." and then usually they maul each other in an intracranial way and a piece is established.)
• Read something new. (I didn't want to write short stories until I read a bunch of crappy ones and challenged myself to "do better". Ever since I read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", I've been fighting the temptation to create a large series of fanfic for it. Reading will pretty much always make a writer want to write, from my experiences.)

RebelGoddess

I agree completely. Check my sig, lol.

"Writer's block" is basically just a form of subconscious procrastination.

Racheal

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Stefanie

Non disciplined... When I have no inspiration and force myself to write, then I always write something that sucks.

SilkFX

^^That's part of the game...most of what you write will suck. It's only through writing the stuff that sucks that you find the writing that doesn't suck (or, at least, sucks less). See my sig.

Co-signing with most of what everyone has said, esp. RebelGoddess. I've just spent the last two hours putzing around the Internet instead of working on a novel proposal. Procrastination, plain and simple. I'm guilty, I admit it.

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To everyone who keeps saying "I can't start!" or "I can't keep going!" or "I can't finish!":

Early drafts are ALLOWED to be crap. Feel free to write the crappiest crap that ever crapped. Don't think about it...just get it all out on the page. Then roll up your sleeves and turn that crap into something worth reading.
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Monkuta

Not to offend you "professional writers" who tend to know what your talking about, but I think all this "no such thing as writers block" stuff is bull. Anybody can be at a loss for ideas at one time or another, and whether you want to admit it, up there on your pedestal of knowledge, I bet it's happened to every single person who said writer's block is an excuse for amateurs. That's discouraging to writers who do sometimes get writers block. And seriously, some of you said it's okay to sit down and mindlessly sit down and pump out a story. That's also bull. A story isn't worth reading if there wasn't real, interested work put into it. I probably sound really cheesy and stupid right now, but when I read all of your comments, I lost all interest in writing for about fifteen seconds because I didn't want to get out of high school and go into a career where I spend all day pumping out crap stories that only exist because I wanted the money. Writers block may be a form of procrastination, but so is anything else that keeps you away from the story. If a family member is sick and you go to visit them in the hospital, that's procrastination, even if it's for a good reason.

So don't act like you're some god-like author who always has an awesome idea for a best-seller in their head. Everyone gets stuck every now and then.

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Monkuta's Favorite Quotes: "Time is our greatest teacher. Unfortunately, it kills most of its' pupils." - Louis Hector Berlioz; "Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings." - Anonymous; "The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on." - Robert Bloch; "Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway." - Anonymous