Thread: I "can't" write anymore and I need help

Ok, I am, as they say, a casual writer. I have written several 'novelettes' which is are quite long and very amateur. I have no confidence to show others my writing but a few years ago, I broke out of the shell. I wrote something appealing to a certain market and heck, they liked it. For a small timer like me, a little recognition goes a long way.

After that, I have established myself as a "writer" and continued to write a lot of stuff including poems. I forgot to tell you, all my writing was due to my teenage loneliness. The feeling of being alone lovelessness (we've all been there, right? ). All of my stories somehow end up as love stories no mater how I alter them.

So technically, I can write because I was lonely. So what if my loneliness was gone. What if I find the girl of my life? Will I stop writing cause the fuel isn't there anymore?

That's exactly what happened.

I got a girlfriend and everyday is just full of love. Now, I can't write! Before, I can write poems for her but now... it's not that I've grown tired of it or it's just that, I hate to admit it, but she's a distraction.

You know how teenage relationship goes right? Especially in our country you are almost 'required' to inform her everything you are doing and going to do. She keeps on texting non stop and when we're both home, we IM each other. She's does not get pissed when I don't reply to her messages, it's just that I feel obliged. And even though I stop texting her, she still keeps on texting me!

It's not a bad thing actually. It's kinda healthy for a relationship to be like that but it really affects my "time" when it comes to writing.

By "time" I mean, the time to think, the time to encode and the time to re-read and edit and I know you know how much time it needs. I don't want to make her feel that I love this little 'hobby' of mine over her. I don't know. I'm really lost. I haven't written anything in almost a year and it's driving me nuts!

Yeah, this is my first post here and I am hoping for a positive response since I assume that all the people here are smart and mature.

Thanks in advance

For 'smart and mature' we will need to refer you to the committee chaired by the Hon. Member for Snakebite River.

But do allow me to see if I understand you correctly. You have had some success as a writer, you are still in your teens, your previous writing had to do with lack of love, now you have found love, so you no longer have a reason to write. If that is correct, then let me say that you now have more reason than ever to write. Distraction? Why, man, she should be your inspiration.

If you are a poet you may be killing that poetic instinct by trying to think too much. And you don't love writing more than her. (Well, maybe as much but don't tell her that.) Consider how sad the song of the old clay pot really is. They never catch one another. For two thousand years and more they've been trying. Now you have your dream at your side. Go with it.

In a word, write.

And let us see what you write. Let's see some of your earlier work, and then let's see the flip side.

"Inspiration" -- exactly what I was going to say.

Take it from someone who knows what it's like to write both with a broken heart and the optimism which comes from a new-found relationship. There is an old adage which I'll paraphrase. Something about poets and how they need pain. You've told yourself that the success you've achieved has come from writing when you were lonely. Ipso facto, you think you need pain to be a good writer. Humour us and attempt to write something while being euphoric. When you compare the two, you'll find that the writing is much the same. If you're lucky, you might even discover that you write better.

As for time: there is always time. A few years ago, when I had a job, I was working fifteen- and sixteen-hour days. I couldn't find time to sleep, never mind write. Then, I discovered that I spent fifteen minutes every morning shaving. I worked on a construction site, so there was no rules stating I couldn't grow a beard. Which is exactly what I did. I gleamed fifteen minutes of time in the morning to write. Then, I discovered that that extra cup of tea cost me another five minutes. I started weeding out the extraneous things in my life which weren't totally necessary. Soon, I had forty minutes of writing time in the morning and an hour in the evening. It can be done.

One last thing: There's no such word as "can't".

I would show it to you but it's in my native language. But I do have some English poems lying around here, they're not that good but I'm quite sure it placed a couple of smiles in someone's face.

This is kinda embarrassing but here goes. Warning: THIS IS FULL OF MUSH. Oh and, If you see a lot of grammatical and syntax error, please feel free to point it out for me cause, as I said, English is not my native tongue. Thank you


I love how you add my name in every single thing you say
I love how you feel upset and say everything is okay
I love how you make me feel alive every single day
I love how you make me cry then wipe my tears away

Too bad I can’t see you
Too bad I can’t be with you
Too bad I still have to wish for you to come my way
And not just go and love me like what I always pray

I love how you never wanna let go when you hold me near
I love how you whisper sweet nothings into my left ear
I love how you ignore me whenever I call you ‘dear’
I love how you emptied my mug to the last drop of beer

So sad I can’t hold you
So sad I can never be with you
So sad I still have to look for you like a needle in a stack of hay
And not just come to me like the sun does everyday

I love how you kiss my lips when nobody is looking
I love how you complain every time I do the cooking
I love how you wipe my forehead when it starts sweating
I love how you love me and say I’m simply your everything

Too bad I have yet to meet you
So sad this is just a dream that won’t come true

Please come to quench my loneliness
Please stay to sweeten my bitterness
Please be real to erase my hopelessness
And please love me so, for I can give to you my wholeness

is it really that bad?

Sorry, I should have told you ahead of time: I'm not the greatest fan of poetry, so I'm not really qualified to comment here. You'll find that you'll get much more comments if you post this in the Poetry section of the forum.

Uh, ok. I still cant write

What are looking for? Time management tips? Relationship advice? Sympathy?

Tips actually. Maybe this is just another case of a huge mental block. I know I can still can but somehow, I can't get around it. I can think of stuff but I feel that the skill I once had in translating my raw feeling into words suddenly faded. It's like I was able to speak before, now I cant.

Not sympathy coz it's actually more sympathizing to see a forum troll like me crawl like this rather than think of a random writer who just cant write.

It just hit me. I'm just a kid and this is very different from all the online game forums I've joined so I should not have the same expectations.

The expectation you should have is that you will learn day by day how to put the 'stuff' you think of into words and the words into a form that talks to us as we read them. Remember, whether you say you can or you say you can't, you will be correct.

Say, "I adore you, I can't wait to be with you, but while I am not, let me ache in silence that I may have the emotion to write, because I need to write. The more I can write, the better person you will have in me."
Tell her you are putting your phone where you cannot hear it, until you've written enough for your peace of mind, but will answer her when you take a break.
Good luck.

Why push yourself to write when you don't feel like it? If you aren't under contract and have no deadline, just blow off writing for awhile and have fun.

If you constantly write you will have less time for actual experience, which is the stuff good writing is made of.

Over the last 30 or 40 years or so of my life, I will often stop working on writing projects for longish periods of time. The usual reason for this is that I am occupied with a relationship, though over the last 10 years or so it's because of REALLY precarious life circumstances that require a good deal of strategizing, quick thinking, and vigilance. (But that's another story.) And of course every so often a relationship will come along and screw things up even worse.

When I'm having "an experience", i.e., a romantic relationship, angry villagers with torches and pitchforks congregating on my lawn, a motorcycle run to Phoenix, AZ and back, etc., I acknowledge to myself that I'm not going to get any writing done, and that's just how it is--but I also know that once I DO sit down to write, whatever I write will have been greatly enriched by the experiences I've had.

I don't beat myself up over it and I don't think you should, either. Life is long--you'll probably be amazed at all the time you'll have to write just a few years from now.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I hope it was helpful to you in some way.

Thank you for that wonderful post.

So you're saying that I should just wait for it to come back?

I'm just worried since I consider myself to be a "non-talented" person until I discovered writing. Now it's gone and I dont know if its gonna come back anytime soon. I'm back to what I have been a few years ago.

When I read the stuff I made back then, I am amazed on how I gathered up the effort and where I got the ideas I put there. It seems impossible now.

I used to write comedy sketches.

When I used to struggle for inspiration to hit I would write down about thirty words on bits of paper, shove em in a bowl and then pick three out.

I would then have to write a sketch with each of those words in.

It doesn't matter how "good" the writing is, it just gets you back "doing" it. The rest will follow.

Sometimes I find myself in this sort of situation. Looking at it from the outside now, I believe it might be your lack of confidence that is messing with you. If you're anything like me, abandoning it for awhile might seem scary as you may feel like you'll no longer to able to 'grab' those ideas or verbalize them after you return. Something that you said clicked with me:

I am amazed on how I gathered up the effort and where I got the ideas I put there. It seems impossible now.

I can't tell you how many times I've thought this. Looking at it now it seems like you're taking the credit away from youreslf and giving it to some intangible muse. Own your talent. Chill out about whatever block you might have and open yourself up to enjoying your life in the place it's in now. I think doing that will cause the inspiration to flow.