Resources to beat writer's block?

[thrillingdetectivetales]

I've been having a tough time just getting words down on the page recently, and I was hoping that some of my fellow writers out there might have recommendations for like, inspirational resources that can help with focusing on maintaining momentum early on in the process rather than worrying too much about quality in a first draft?

I'm trying to logic my way through it but I still find myself getting a little stuck in going back and editing and worrying about whether what little I've got written is exactly right rather than just following the narrative through to its end.

Anyone? Bueller?

Comments

[muccamukk]

I mean, I actually DO use write or die, but realising that makes normal people anxious as fuck...

I've had some luck with white on white screen writing, where you literally can't look at what you've already written, because it's invisible. So you just have to keep going with your unholy mess of a story, and know that you can figure it out later.

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Yeah, I've tried your second method a couple of times, (very light gray on white just to avoid accidentally clicking into the wrong spot on the window, lol) and it worked okay though I think I was still a little too caught up in whether what I was producing was any good or not to really use it the way it's meant to be used. I'm afraid this is a largely cerebral problem and I'm not really sure how to get past it from that perspective.

I would try write or die but the issue there is that a good portion of my writing process is thinking about where I want to go next and something on that tight a timeline pretty much guarantees consistent failure, which will probably not help much with maintaining a level of confidence in my ability.

I'm less concerned with like, physical ways to get words down on a page and more concerned with how to get over the mental hurdle of "it doesn't matter that this isn't up to your usual standards, it doesn't mean you're a bad writer if you can't spit out a word-perfect first draft the second you sit down to write." Which is a lot harder to quantify a solution for. Maybe I just need to talk to my therapist, lol.

Thank you for your feedback, friend~ I'll probably pull out the "light on white" trick again and see if that gets me anywhere in the next few days.

[muccamukk]

Someone linked me to this, idk if it's the kind of thing you find helpful: https://excellentjourney.net/2015/03/04/art-fear-the-ceramics-class-and-quantity-before-quality/

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Oh! Yeah I've seen this ceramics story before. Definitely a great thing to try to keep in mind. Might just be that I need to get more practice in, lol.

Thank you for all your help, friend!! <3

[kaasknot]

this is sort of in reply to smth you said to mucca, that it's mostly a cerebral problem--i have v similar issues. what helps me is to alter my state of mind, to sort of go into a trance state, so that i'm not so much Writing A Story as living it and recording what i see. extremely active daydreaming, lol. i usually listen to drumming or rhythmic folk music, i've got some didgeridoo albums, and also a bunch by wardruna (new agey scandinavian folk), and that usually helps. dance or trance music is also good. anything with a strong beat and no words/words i can't understand. then i just... let myself sink into the scene. pace doesn't matter, just what i see in my mind's eye.

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Wow! That sounds really, really cool. I don't know that my brain works in quite the same way, but I like your meditative approach.

I already tend to use music the way you're suggesting, and I do have times where I can lay down scenes kind of like you're describing it but that for me usually only happens during moments of heavy inspiration, which is not something I've figured out yet how to harness. If I could figure out how to turn my brain off that would be a good first step for a lot of problems that I have, lol.

I'll try to keep this in mind next time I sit down to write, though. Who knows, maybe something will click! Thanks for the suggestion~

[nenya_kanadka]

I haven't necessarily been able to leverage this for actually getting through writer's block, but one thing I have noticed is that when I look back through stuff I wrote a while ago, I can't really see a difference in quality between the stuff that came spilling out of my head almost effortlessly and the stuff I had to tear my hair out over and fight for every sentence of. Sometimes I look at stuff that I remember being such a bear to write, and that I remember as being kind of shit, and I read it with the distance of a couple of years and, like...it actually doesn't suck, it's actually a pretty good read!

So that tells me that my perception of something I'm writing now as being awful and pointless and needing 9 billion edits before it's worth going on to the next scene...may not actually be accurate. Whether that helps me to leave it the fuck alone and write the next bit... 🤷🏻‍♀️ lol.

Good luck! 💕💕💕

[thrillingdetectivetales]

This is a really good point! And definitely worth remembering when pursuing new writing endeavors. Thanks Nenya!!

(Also that icon! LMAO xD)