{"id":98,"date":"2012-03-06T10:36:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T10:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/?p=98"},"modified":"2012-08-15T02:55:50","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T02:55:50","slug":"on-writers-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/on-writers-block\/","title":{"rendered":"ON WRITER’S BLOCK"},"content":{"rendered":"

neil-gaiman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
I\u2019ve seem to be hitting writer\u2019s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don\u2019t turn in anything because i\u2019m never really satisfied with anything i do. all my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once i write it down. How do you get pass writers block?<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>\u00a0whimsyrachy<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n
\n

You turn off your inner critic. You do not listen to your inner police force. You ignore the little voices that tell you that it\u2019s all stupid, and you keep going.<\/p>\n

Your grade isn\u2019t suffering because your writing is bad, it\u2019s suffering because you aren\u2019t finishing things and handing them in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, finish them and hand them in. Even if a story\u2019s lousy, you\u2019ll learn something from it that will be useful as a writer, even if it\u2019s just \u201cdon\u2019t do that again\u201d.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re always going to be\u00a0dissatisfied\u00a0with what you write. That\u2019s part of being human. In our heads, stories are perfect, flawless, glittering, magical. Then we start to put them down on paper, one unsatisfactory word at a time. And each time our inner critics tell us that it\u2019s a rotten idea and we should abandon it.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re going to write, ignore your inner critic, while you\u2019re writing. Do whatever you can to finish. Know that anything can be fixed later.<\/p>\n

Remember: you don\u2019t have to brilliant when you start out. You just have to write. Every story you finish puts you closer to being a writer, and makes you a better writer.<\/p>\n

Blaming \u201cWriter\u2019s Block\u201d is wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the \u201cblock\u201d. It gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s probably more honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting Stuck. If you\u2019re being lazy, don\u2019t be. If you\u2019re being a perfectionist, don\u2019t be. And if you\u2019re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make it work, and then start writing again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, yes<\/em>! A thousand times, a million<\/em> times, YES<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

THIS.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(For what it’s worth, I love that Neil’s thoughts very nearly parallel my own<\/a> from a few years ago. Makes me feel good that a major author feels the same way about writer’s block that I do.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

neil-gaiman: I\u2019ve seem to be hitting writer\u2019s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don\u2019t turn in anything because i\u2019m never really satisfied with anything i do. all my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once i write it down. How do you get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[244],"tags":[44,184,183],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-neil-gaiman","tag-perfectionism","tag-writers-block","last-post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}