50 Ideas to Immediately Combat Writers Block « Andrea Goulet
OK… i came across this list when i was surfing around in the middle of the night, checking on some sites, researching, well, I was procrastinating, doing anything but writing which is what I got on here to do in the first place, but of course, first I had to check my mail and answer some messages and click this link…and another…
and I have to confess that reading this list was all the inspiration I needed [at least to come here] because it is pretty much a list of all the things I do anyway when I am procrastinating, I mean combating writer’s block…[which sounds so much better], but am I? I am a procrastinator from way back, in fact, I would have minored in it but I never got around to applying, though i definitely racked up the credits. At this point I have to admit that I am not so much blocked as I am slack… [Can I call it "writer's slack"?] That’s what I mean by ‘flow’– I have ideas flowing out of most of my orifices these days but I am just not doing it enough…‘it’ being writing, producing…creating…
Sometimes I have so many thoughts and ideas streaming through me, I can’t stop and get them down…my best stories have never made it to paper. Is that even writing? When I was young, I couldn’t sleep at night until I followed a story through, in my head. They’re all still up there, bumping around, and of course, they have to compete with all of the anxieties and numbers and crap i have to remember and think of all damnday… I still can’t sleep with the noise going on in there, so I read other people’s books until I fall asleep…or get caught in the web where I read other blogs… other people’s words just to avoid my own…
Even this has become a diversion of sorts, but it’s also an exercise. Perhaps in futility, but like I said when I began this weblog, this is a learning experience. Aren’t they all?
Which somehow leads me back to Ms. Goulet’s list…another diversion perhaps, or maybe a checklist I have almost completed. Now that I have procrastinated enough and released the block, am I ready to work?
NaNoWriMo
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April 16, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Andrea Goulet
Thanks for the link. I for one prefer the term “synthesizing”, as that’s how I believe the ideas in my head somehow make it out into the world. While most of us have countless thoughts swimming through our minds, formulating the strategy in how best to express them often requires subconscious thought and therefore, a diversion. In that case, when you are distracted (or procrastinating — call it what you will), it could be argued that you are actually working the hardest. Not always the easiest concept to explain to those fast-paced type-As.