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Writer’s Block Cures

My general advice to avoid writer’s block is genuinely just to have a life outside of writing. Friends, hobbies, anything that isn’t writing and work because once you make writing your entire life it becomes infinitely harder. But here are some cures for different types of issues:

The inspiration issue - I just don’t know what to write!

- Go outside and pick out tiny things about the world around you that are charming, think about your connection to the world around you, have a little existentialism moment

- Read literary theory, critique, and philosophy, an educated writer is an inspired writer

- Read/watch challenging and thought provoking media, the more something makes you think, the more invaluable it is to your writing journey

- Listen to music

- Phone a friend, what in society do you two like to discuss? Maybe you could write something about that

The discipline issue - I’ve sat at my document for hours and it’s still blank

- Sit down, write for fifteen minutes, no stopping, no going back, just do it.

- Put all of your distractions in another room or take your writing somewhere else and write for either an allotted amount of time or to a certain word count

- form some kind of routine around writing, does a cup of tea and a certain song help you lock in? Well it will if you start associating that specific type of tea and that specific song with writing.

The technical issue - everything I write sounds like garbage

- Do warm ups, writing is an art and you need to study its technique. Write something completely non-canon with your blorbos or whatever with the pure goal of improving one technique in your writing (voice, grammar, characterization, theme, prose, dialogue, etc.)

- Write a short story, something completely new with a specific message in mind, consider while writing how to weave that message into 3000 words or less, what techniques can you use?

The exhaustion issue - my writing is so dark/personal that I feel like I’m going to crash

- Put your characters somewhere else, somewhere completely non-canon, maybe even write a therapy sesh, whatever you need to do for catharsis

- Take a break, maybe work on something else to preserve your technical skills, you don’t have to work on your project all the time, you can take a break

- Talk with friends, can be about your writing or not but talking with people you like will help with your clarity of mind

The commitment issue - I’m bored of what I’m currently writing

- Reexamine what you’re writing, what about it are you bored with, your characters? Your setting? Your themes? Readjust accordingly

- Bite the bullet and commit. Follow my discipline advice above and just commit to it, if you change stories every time you get bored will you ever make something?

The time issue - I just don’t have the time!

- Write on your phone, a small notebook, or any other personal device, then you’ll never run out of time!

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people might think creating OC lore involves a lot of thinking & planning, but in my personal experience, OC development is more like a divine vision from a god slamming you over the head with a mallet while ur doing the fuckin dishes or folding laundry

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What they don't tell you about writing is that as you write, you discover scenes and entire plots that you hadn't accounted for that need to be written. So you can spend two hours writing and editing only to realise you're further away from the finish line than you thought you were when you started

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part of the editing process is lying on the floor and begging your cat to bite through your jugular

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a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

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people might think creating OC lore involves a lot of thinking & planning, but in my personal experience, OC development is more like a divine vision from a god slamming you over the head with a mallet while ur doing the fuckin dishes or folding laundry

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You don’t realize how good you have it til you lose institutional JSTOR access

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23k words into my first draft

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How about in 2024 we stop it with reading books with the goal in mind to finish the book so you can add it to your list of read books and start reading books slowly and intentionally with the goal to rip it into pieces with your mind and be touched by it and formed by it and changed by it

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Sorry to break it to you, but it's not going to write itself. So you might as well get to work.

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So...I got published.

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"I have concepts of a plan"=me looking at the many WIPs lying abandoned in my documents folder

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Imposter syndrome hits hard

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If Tybalt Had Survived

Juliet: Did you HAVE to stab Mercutio?!

Tybalt: You weren’t there. You didn’t hear what he said to me.

Juliet: What did he say??

Tybalt: “What are you gonna do? Stab me?”

Juliet: …Ok, that’s fair.

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I know we're supposed to refer to other authors by their last name if we don't know them, but I will use the first name if the work isn't good. They have to earn that last name.