Comments on: Blog Chain (1)

By: Razib Ahmed

Razib Ahmed — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:36:51 +0000

Taking a break is the best thing to do at this moment. If possible go on a trip.

By: FreshHell

FreshHell — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:51:33 +0000

Well, I think this is just a natural ebb in life. We have ups and downs, slow times and frenetic times. Took me 8 years to finish my current novel. Why? Children. Work. And, procrastination. But, in that time the book became better, I got older, experienced things that I hadn’t eight years ago (motherhood is quite the experience) and that informed my writing. So, I wouldn’t worry too much. It’ll come back. Usually there’s a reason for periods like these. Perhaps a daily writing prompt can create something worth coming back to later. Or, pick up a book and just read.

By: colbymarshall

colbymarshall — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:23:58 +0000

I myself took a long break between finishing my last project and starting a new one. If I’d had tried to sit right down and write something, I’d have sit there forever just staring at a blank screen. You need some refresh time…don’t worry over it. It’ll come!

By: Donna

Donna — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:54:10 +0000

The only advise I can offer is to stop complaining about it and just do it. Perfectionism leads to the fabled writer’s block and you have no one to blame but yourself. Write shit. Allow yourself to write shit. That’s the only way you’ll be able to move forward with writing. Write for perfectionism on the first try and you’ll be perpetually stuck there. You have to buckle down and just do it. There really isn’t any other way around it.

By: Snowflake

Snowflake — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:15:58 +0000

The problem is I am somewhere close to a perfectionist and have the impression that the sentence always has to be perfect at first try, which tends to block me at the very first sentence.. and I’ve been doing that for months now..

By: Laurie Ashton

Laurie Ashton — Mon, 26 May 2008 02:41:54 +0000

I think most of us have taken extended breaks from writing at one time or another. One of mine was a year and a half. I just couldn’t write during that time. The tsunami had happened here, the country was suffering badly, the majority of people I know here had lost family and friends, some of them having lost everyone they were related to. Major suffering. And I’m the oversensitive type who suffers along with them and bawls like a baby when watching the news (so we stopped watching the news), and it blocked me horribly.

Well, we all have our reasons for taking breaks and the reasons are varied. The bottom line is that, yes, at some point, if you want to be a writer, you have to start writing again.

For me, I decided to write something for fun. Not with the end goal of publishing. With the goal of playing. Something that was strictly for me. It turns out that the story will be publishable – when I get around to finishing it – but it was also a lot of fun to write. It was fantasy (I usually write science fiction) and not at all like what I usually write and there was no pressure to turn it into something decent. It just coincidentally turned out that way.

Perhaps doing something like that would help you?

By: Snowflake

Snowflake — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:49:41 +0000

Matt, I haven’t written in months. Just blogging. Nothing else. Otherwise I wouldn’t worry about myself. But I’m not getting myself to restart the whole process of getting back into writing…

By: Mad Scientist Matt

Mad Scientist Matt — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:19:34 +0000

You may need a short break from writing, just like everyone can need a short break for work. Maybe take a few days “vacation” from writing, then get back to the old butt-in-chair routine once a set number of days (like 3 or 4) are up.

By: Snowflake

Snowflake — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:22:37 +0000

College can get more than just stupid. It’s at the stage I’m at, plain annoying.

By: Samuel Tinianow

Samuel Tinianow — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:53:48 +0000

You need that kind of lull sometimes. I’ve spent some of my time unemployed to catch up with lost friends and interests, look around and remember why I went into a professional field where I’m bound to make less money than other college graduates in my class.

At the same time, those lulls need to have some kind of boundary. I spent about the first 48 hours after I was laid off lounging around, reading comic books and eating junk food. Before I started, however, I let everyone around me know, “Attention: this is my moment of weakness. I don’t get any more after this. The ass-kicking starts tomorrow.”

College, on the other hand, was just stupid.