Monday 27 February 2012

How do you deal with writer's block?

Writer's Block. Two words that strike dread into the heart of any aspiring author.

I had a bad case of De Quervain's Tendonitis in my right hand at the end of last year and it meant I couldn't hold a pen or type properly for a good six weeks. It was very frustrating to keep getting ideas and not be able to jot them down. I even resorted to recording myself notes on my phone so I'd have something to come back to later.

But over the last month (typically, since my tendonitis cleared up!) I've found I've been having trouble thinking of ideas, and when I do get an idea I have no idea what to do with it. This, I'm finding, is infinitely more frustrating than not being able to write down ideas.

I've been quite lucky and not had this problem very often before, but it's really annoying me at the moment. I've tried my 10 word prompts, where I take 10 random words and try to fit them into a story, I've tried random story generators, and I've tried using pictures as prompts, but it's still not shifting the wroter's block.

I'm hoping it's going to be something that will just disappear in time if I keep plugging away, but if anyone's got any good tips on how to get rid of writer's block that would be really helpful!

3 comments:

  1. Have you tried fanficcing your own stuff? Write an AU of your own novel! Sometimes that does the trick for me because it gets you back into the heads of the characters and their setting, but you get to explore new ideas and have a bit of fun. [:

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  2. Ooh, that's a good idea, thanks for the tip :)

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  3. Writer's block definitely sucks, to put it bluntly. Erin has an awesome idea and I vote it a thousand percent.

    I'm also a huge fan of freewriting. Just start writing. Even if it starts with, "I have no ideas at all so I'm just going to stream-of-consciousness this all out to you," chances are you'll eventually trip into an idea along the way!

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