Thread: Writers Block Article

hey everyone here is an article I hope you will enjoy.


How to Cure Writers Block

Jerry Cleaver's "Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course" has some interesting remedies for writers block. Very informative book.

I posted a comment on your lens. See you on Squidoo!

Li Li

Miranda's link includes this quote: 'Every writer suffers from writers block at one point or another in their writing career.'

Nonsense.

I've known plenty of people, professional writers, who never knew what 'writer's block' was supposed to be. I've never understood why there should ever be a time when putting one word after another should become difficult. My problem has always been the opposite. I always write too much and have to trim or the copy editor will trim it for me and I don't want that rascal molesting my copy.

On the other hand, if you do suffer from writer's block, you must be a writer.

The trick is to go on to do other things while you wait for the idea to mature. Once it's matured, then it becomes time to procrastinate and tell yourself that if you wait even longer, it will be even better. You've now raised the bar on yourself and the procrastination is justified, and your work will have more quality. Problem solved.

All of his solutions are things I do all the time anyway.

'Gosh, Mr. Editor, I guess it's too bad I missed the deadline with that story on this morning's city council meeting you said you needed for this afternoon's edition, but you'll have to forgive me. I have writer's block. I'll go do some warm-up exercises and maybe I can have it for you tomorrow.'

Making fun of those who experience writers block doesn't change the fact that it's a real issue. Some writers experience it and some don't.

Sorry. It seems like a silly idea to me, but if it's real for some people then I suppose they need to find a cure. I have lived my life meeting deadlines and never had a problem doing so. It's just a normal part of living. I would suggest that people who have writer's block stay away from journalism.

Originally Posted by garza

'Gosh, Mr. Editor, I guess it's too bad I missed the deadline with that story on this morning's city council meeting you said you needed for this afternoon's edition, but you'll have to forgive me. I have writer's block. I'll go do some warm-up exercises and maybe I can have it for you tomorrow.'

For the gazillionth time, you're not making any distinction between journalism and creative writing. You're reporting facts, not writing fiction or conjuring stories from thin air. Sometime the ideas -- or good ones -- just don't seem to come. It's a different sort of process than writing non-fiction.

If you've done your homework or research, conducted your interviews or whatever, then of course, you're not going to experience the same kind of block.

But when I sit down to write a made-up story it's the same - maybe easier. I don't have to be careful about getting all the details exactly correct. I can create characters, settings, stories, whatever, without hindrance. Non-fiction can be very tedious, especially writing for government agencies and NGOs who have their own styles. I can write the made-up story any way I want it to go.

I suppose the concept of picking up a pencil or sitting down at a keyboard and not being able to write whatever I want to write is so foreign to me that I have a hard time grasping it. Describe the colour red to a blind man.

So you're saying journalists never suffer from writers block? I'm sure it's less common but they're certainly not exempt from it. If one journalist can't do it, they would simply just hand it off to someone else. If you have no experience with writers block (when others obviously have), why make fun of it? I think that's silly. Just saying.

Here's a U.S. university site I found that might be useful. It's about 'freewriting' which I've heard of before as a good warm-up exercise.

Writer's Web: Freewriting: A Way Around Writer's Block

I don't recall hearing other journalists complain about it, but I suspect that a person with a serious writer's block problem would not last long in the craft. As far as handing off to another reporter, that's the last thing you want to do. If I'm filing for AP and the next fellow is a stringer for UPI you better believe I want to get my story written and on the wire ahead of him.

You have convinced me that for some writers it's a real problem.

Originally Posted by garza

But when I sit down to write a made-up story it's the same - maybe easier. I don't have to be careful about getting all the details exactly correct. I can create characters, settings, stories, whatever, without hindrance. Non-fiction can be very tedious, especially writing for government agencies and NGOs who have their own styles. I can write the made-up story any way I want it to go.

I suppose the concept of picking up a pencil or sitting down at a keyboard and not being able to write whatever I want to write is so foreign to me that I have a hard time grasping it. Describe the colour red to a blind man.

Wow. So every time you sit down to write fiction, the stories just spill out onto the page – because it’s all just “made up.”

That’s great -- but is it anything worth reading? I haven’t read any of your fiction, so I can’t comment. I could sit down and just crank out words, regardless – whether or not it would be any good is the question.

To me, writers block isn't that you can't write anything at all -- it's about if it's worth reading or even salvaging. Of course, it's possible to sit down and just write something.