Writer's Block For Years...?

"I can't come up with anything good or worth reading."

This implies you have ideas, you just think they're bad. That's irrelevant. You must write.

Do you honestly think an artist just happens to make a masterpiece every time? That an athlete just goes out and wins a gold medal? No. These people practice. Most of the time it's not interesting, but they keep practicing. So must you.

Write. Write anything. Write about your day, write about something that interests you, write about someone who interests you, write short stories, write world building documents. You are not a writer because you had written something years ago... you are a writer because you spend time writing. Most importantly, write when you don't feel like it - force yourself to write regularly.

I'm an indie games developer. I spend most of my time writing code for my game. Many times I don't feel like I want to work on a specific thing, because it's boring or hard. But I force myself. This makes me feel better because I end up achieving something, instead of just watching TV. Even if it's ugly code, it serves a purpose. The same for writing short stories, which I have done on and off over the years.

Feeling uninspired? Read. Fiction, history, the news. Watch documentaries. Listen to radio talk shows. Go for walks. Exercise. Do something. You either do, or you do not. Don't care about whether it's bad or not, write. The more you write, the better your writing will become.

posted over 6 years ago

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inappropriateCode‭

55 reputation 2 5 10 0

There are lots of things that push our creativity to the side or that bring it back on full force.

1. Stress. I guess you are in your early 20s? Maybe you're finishing a degree, or starting a job, or moving, or even getting married, or having children.

Any of these things will take precedence over writing. When you were a teenager, you had to write for classes, and writing was probably therapeutic for you too. But if life came along and gave you other things to take care of, you won't have the same nudge to sit down and put pen to paper. You mind is on the here and now, the details of 'adulting.'

2. Close death or divorce etc (this is #1 on steroids)

I have a friend who loves to sing and her husband started abusing her and guess what, she never felt like singing and she told me she didn't know why and we were all like "because your husband is abusing you" and when she got out of the relationship guess what? She started singing again. This is a thing. Heavy stress will change what you feel like doing.

3. You are 'settling down.' I think there probably is something to the idea that what you feel in teenage years changes in your twenties. Each decade has its own 'thing.' The twenties are all about those grown up things - Jobs and what not. Thirties are mostly about kids, forties are about other things and fifties and sixties and seventies and so on.

This does not mean you are not a writer. It means many people are different in their twenties than they were as teenagers.

If you want to write a little bit, you could start a blog, or enter short story contests, or join a writer's club (meet-up has writers clubs everywhere), or just get a notebook and do short form stuff (poetry). A blog has a nice advantage in that you can build up a whole series of blog-gy posts and if you get back to other types of writing down the road, you have this nice set of blog posts that chronicle where you were and so on for the past xx years. You might have followers too, if it's on FB.

Things come and go and come back again. Don't sweat it.

posted over 6 years ago

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DPT‭

660 reputation 40 73 114 0

First, what happened two to three years ago? What happened in the months after the last story you wrote? You don't have to tell me, this is for yourself to contemplate, and I am not soliciting any criminal or sexual history, or any betrayals committed or suffered, or any unrequited love or rejection, or any other kind of emotional trauma concerning yourself, your family or friends.

I suspect that your lack of writing is due to a significant emotional event. Understanding that is your first step to moving on from it.

Another route toward this would be analyzing what you wrote, and how it changed over time. What did your fictional characters do that inspired you or pleased you? Were you writing your own wish fulfillment fiction, e.g. McKenna finds true love, or conquers evil, or solves world hunger, or goes to Harvard. If you were, get in better touch with your own current aspirations, think about how stories could illustrate them.

Or perhaps, the idealistic self-expectations you once had became unrealizable. Despite your best efforts, you did not get into Harvard, and did not even get a full scholarship. Or did not become an actress, or young politician, or professional athlete, or published author, or whatever you truly thought possible as a young teen. Perhaps your current block is a result of disappointment.

Perhaps you felt that writing was fun because something like it would someday come true, and as an adult you find that naive and silly. If I look at the stories I wrote as a young teen, they are unpublishable naive drivel I regard quite fondly, because they do reflect some of my core desires for justice, fairness, and the permanent destruction of evil.

Another way of putting this is that very young children dress up as superheroes or princesses because they truly believe they could grow up to be like that: But eventually they grow up and realize that is childish and impossible, and stop dressing as superman or wonderwoman.

In the same way, you may have grown out of the kind of stories you used to write, that came easily to you, and if you want to continue writing (I assume you do or you wouldn't have asked this question) you need to stop dressing up as a superhero with magical powers, and move on to more difficult, vulnerable adult heroes that are more realistic and not guaranteed to win.

I suspect your life changed 2-3 years ago, and that change is what shut down your writing. It may have been a permanent change (first love, first sex, first something-else), but that is okay: It should just mark a change in what you write about going forward. Figure out what happened, and that will help you figure out why it should not have changed the fact that you write, it should only have changed how you write and what you write about and what you want from writing.

posted over 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Amadeus‭

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