One of the things I’ve learned as a writer is that the brain (or at least my brain) is absolute crap at pulling ideas out of thin air. What it is good at, however, is seeing patterns and drawing connections. To this end I’ve actually used Tarot cards as a plot and or character building aid. You pull a card or three, look up the meanings, and decide if any of those make sense as an idea starter for what you’re trying to do. (And if you don’t like any of them you can discard and redraw!) Similarly I find it easiest to get the broad strokes of a plot or character down first and fill in the blanks as I go instead of hammering everything out ahead of time.
Another psychology-adjacent writing tip I’ve learned is – don’t force it. By that I mean if you’re staring at a blank page and getting nothing done, stop. Get up and go do something else, and then try again. Don’t give up, but trying to force yourself through via willpower just makes your brain associate sitting down to write with stress and anxiety. A lot of people have already given advice about alternate locations to write, which I’ve also found works, but for me it’s mostly that I have trouble writing at the same desk I use to play video games and browse the Internet. Sometimes I can unstick myself by moving to another room in the house and working there instead.
Firstly, I totally get where you are. And it is a frustration that you will come up against again and again. But it is possibly to work past it, and with practice it will become easier.
There is a technique that I’ve found helpful is a mixture of two things: morning pages and pomodoro.
I put 25 minutes on the clock.
I put away the phone, turn off any notifications from the computer, shut down access to the internet for social media or any other distractions.
Write the first thing that comes to mind.
Repeat 3 until end of 25 minutes.
What I find is that this unblocks me. I stop thinking about every single word that is going down, and instead focus on the process.
Because writing is a process. You care not going to put down a perfect sentence. It needs to be refined through drafting. But right now, just get that sentence down, no matter how it sounds.
The why is an unimportant question. It’s the internal critic getting too loud. It gets in the way, makes the process painful.
25 minutes. Just start writing anything. At the end of it, I find either two things:
I really struggled. Mind is wandering. Maybe I’m ruminating on something. Therefore, close the computer, walk away for some time. Walk the dog, do the dishes, go outside.
Or, 2. I found that I started to focus on certain subjects. Words on the page started out simple (“I am sitting here writing the first thing that comes to mind, and I just realised I haven’t made my bed. What is the deal with thread counts, I don’t get it…”) and suddenly I’m writing and exploring an idea. Words are unblocked. I can then guide this energy towards a writing goal for the morning.
But like I say, it is a practice. Make a time to do it every day. 25 minutes. See what happens.
When my muse is running, ideas flow. I will write them down in Scrivener for safe keeping. They can come at any time, even during the night. My stories aren’t great yet because still learning the coding side of writing IF. The subconscious is a wonderful thing.
I think this discussion brings in the classic idea of what constitutes a “well written” piece. As we can also see in the concept of a “muse” in writing, while great ideas do often appear suddenly, anyone who writes professionally can’t just sit and wait for it, instead they utilise writing as a daily habit.
A straight forward line of advice would be:-
Use the software development philosophy of continous improvements, have something that you can call finished and then improve upon it.
Don’t wait for the right way to express your ideas, just write them and keep them as a thought in the back of your mind to find better ways in which they can be expressed.
One other thing I’ll add to consider is the National Geographic Principle.
The National Geographic Principle
I read an interview with a NatGeo photographer who was asked “How do they manage to consistently capture such stunning photographs for every issue of the magazine?” The answer was basically “By not being afraid to waste film: A photographer needs to take 5000 pictures first that are okay, average, bad to maybe get one that approaches stunning or perfect. And you won’t know that until you go through all of them.”
Essentially it’s a law of averages. The more chances you give yourself to take that Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, the more likely you’ll get one capable of winning a prize.
I think too many writers sit down with harsh judgement that everything they write must be perfect. You’re allowed a first draft that is not! And a second, and a third and so on. Some think that if what pours directly out of their head isn’t publication worthy it’s not worth writing and that is exactly wrong. You’ve got to write bad stuff to learn how you want to write. You might write five pages of nonsense but there at the bottom of page four is a phrase that is good and inspires you to build on that.
I know I’m over-metaphoring here, but you have to have enough stone to cut away the parts that don’t belong to get to the work of art buried inside.
In short, don’t be hypercritical of your raw output. Let it be bad at first. Allow yourself to experiment and play with the knowledge that nobody else needs to see it. That’s why artists are often funny about needing time alone - the creation process is vulnerable feeling and maybe almost masturbatory at times because you’re doing it for nobody else. You’ve got to like what you do before anyone else will. Give yourself permission to write poorly with knowledge you will repurpose the inevitable good bits into something that will actually work.
Nobody directly writes a novel without hundreds of discarded ideas. A work of art is a cull. You’ve got to write lots of bad pages to learn how to write a few good pages.
That’s very reassuring because I have many, many concepts which lead to nothing. Good to know that this might be considered a short term failure but might lead to a long term success.
I agree with all that, but I’ll add-- let it be bad in the final draft, too. Because you probably will never be satisfied. I wrote a game (Of Their Shadows Deep) where everyone praised the writing, and I absolutely hated it. It wasn’t what I envisioned. It wasn’t Yeats-worthy (the game uses a Yeats poem and so that standard was always in front of me). I was embarrassed to put it out there. And yet everyone told me how good it was. How can this be?
The answer lies in a lesson that I first learned from being a visual artist-- no one knows what you envisioned. Nobody has access to the incredible images and transitions that you have as your ideal. I have a whole cabinet of canvases that I absolutely hate. Violently. They are awful. And yet whenever people see them, they love them and I invariably sell one. Because they don’t have any idea that they are monumental failures in my eyes.
So let it be bad all the way through. You might be surprised at its worth in other people’s eyes.
Thank you for all of your replies! Really, I’ve been pretty astounded by the willingness of everyone to help and very thankful for the advice given. Just reading this thread gives me a lot of encouragement to keep writing and trying to write.
I managed to get to 500 words today with one of my drafts. It’s not a lot, and my enthusiasm gradually petered out by the last few sentences, but it’s a start. I’ll try to keep at it and hopefully we might get somewhere, someday.
Artists often lose track that they are not civilians and have way higher - often ridiculous standards than the norm.
I worked in a dinner theater as a singing waiter
It felt like a semi-artless drudgery job, but it paid. Usually you signed up to work 3-4 months and do two different themed revues in a contract, then the cast would rotate; some people would stay on, so they were always auditioning. One afternoon while we (the current cast) were setting up the dining room, they notified us “Some people are coming in to sing for the music director at the piano onstage, so just be aware no plate juggling or distractions.”
We were all ready to be impressed. “woo, people coming to take our jobs!” and joked that we’d all be fired. Actually how terrifying to audition in a location in front of an existing cast of ten people just casually doing their job in the room with you…
Anyway both the singers they brought in were completely unprepared novices. One sang “Happy Birthday” because she neglected to bring correct sheet music. All of us discussed afterward that we really didn’t understand the moderately professional level we’d attained without realizing, being in that pool all the time. We were unwittingly at a higher level than we knew: Of course you bring music. Of course you learn the words before you go in. All of us had forgotten we were not civilians and it was a reminder that we were not terrible at our jobs and just had different expectations of the art form and competency level based on experience.
There’s a lot of great advice here, but let me see if I can add something useful. First, a bit about me.
I’ve been working on a novel since 2005. So far, 16 people have read all or parts of it. Some enjoyed reading it; others thought it “had potential.” (I’m somewhere in the middle.) Some thought it was finished back in 2012; others think it still needs work. (Obviously, I’m with the latter group.) Sometimes I work on it daily for months at a time; other times I don’t touch it for even longer periods.
So you may wish to take my struggles into account when considering the following advice.
All art is subjective. Nothing is universally loved. As hard as it is for me to get my head around it, there are people who don’t like the Beatles. Once I accepted the fact that not everyone will think my creations are great (or even mediocre), it made it much easier for me to write.
The subject of writing habits has been well covered here. All I’ll add is that when I force myself into some sort of structure, words get written; when I don’t, they don’t.
Nothing I write comes out right the first time. Or even the second or the third. Seriously, probably the 7th or the 8th is more like it. So I view the first draft as just jotting down ideas, knowing I’ll come back and fix things up later. This is a great pressure reliever.
I enjoy reading your posts on this forum. You’re an interesting person (to me, anyway!) with much to say. Translating your thoughts into fiction may be challenging you at the moment, but you have the two necessary basic ingredients - ideas and a desire to express them. With practice and discipline, the rest should follow. Believe in yourself!
My inspiration for writing comes from my own experience. If you’re like me, here’s a suggestion for a story. As you know, conflict is generally an important element of fiction. When I write, I look for conflict in my own life that I can explore in my stories. From your earlier posts, I see (a) you enjoy looking at the night sky; and (b) you love cities - not exactly known for being great places to stargaze - and apparently live in one. This is an unfortunate circumstance, but it’s also a metaphor for all sorts of things. No doubt there’s a story here (interactive or otherwise), perhaps a slice of life, or maybe a psychological horror. But only you would know that - it’s your story. Do you want to write it? If so, I’d be very interested to read it. If not, maybe you have another conflict you’d rather explore instead.
That’s it. Hope I was helpful in some little way. Best of luck!
Thank you for this suggestion! In truth, I’ve always been attracted to (and best understood) writing from my own experience. But due to the whole “self-insert” problem that’s been expounded on in some authoring communities, and the fact that when I look at other writers, especially writers of the sci-fi/fantasy genres, it often seems like they write personas and characters completely different from who they actually are, I’ve internalized a lot of shame and reluctance of writing anything related to myself or my own experiences. It felt like for a very long time that if I did so I would be being “selfish”, “not understanding”, or very “inflexible” about other people’s experiences — of course, theoretically I’ve now realized that you can’t not write from your own experiences. You can’t pull anything from thin air. And you shouldn’t be so overtly ashamed about yourself or the events you’ve gone through as a person, in no way is that a healthy or productive mindset to do anything in.
So thank you a lot for your reminder/ideas! They’ve given me some more interesting morsels for thought.
First, a bit about me: I’m more comfortable programming than writing prose, and when it comes to writing, I have a much easier time editing than typing out the text in the first place.
So, one thing that’s been working for me:
Write out a skeletal implementation, with horrible throwaway placeholder text.
Once the very basics are working, play through it with the transcription on until I’ve got a few pages of text.
Dump that text into an ordinary document editor. Edit the transcript, without much concern for how it will be implemented.
Back to the code! Paste bits of the edited transcript back into the source. Figure out if / how you can implement the features that your edited transcript suggested you should have. Expand things a bit.
Back to step 2!
This is probably net-more-work than if I just wrote everything in the same place, but it does seem to help keep things moving when I’m running out of steam, and keeps that painful staring-at-a-blank-page writing experience to a minimum. All very specific to both parser games and my particular shape of brain, of course, but in case someone else on the thread has these in common…
