Advice From None Writers/Artists

[Lemmy963]

Was asked for some advice a bit earlier from a younger friend about writing , dealing with writer's block and just many different ideas on ways to keep the creative juices flowing.

One problem I had tho was all the advice that none creative/artist types seem to always have at the ready. I don't even want to list all the B.S. advice I've gotten over the years from people who didn't even read a book in High School.

So in the end, we just ended up yapping about advice we'd gotten from others and, just creative junk in general. Not like any one writer does anything like the guy next to him. But, it did get me to thinking about what kind of lame advice others may have gotten.

Granted I know people are welcome to their own views and opinions but how often can you get advice like "the trick is writing only what you know." Sure, it sounds good but honestly, it never really ever works in practice.

Hell, writer's block is one of the reasons I'm here. When I hit the wall on one project or another the one "outlet" I know that works for me is writing something short/sweet and fun (like erotic short stories).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, anyone want to share advice on writing, art, whatever? How about advice on dealing with non-creative types who just don't get how any of this is fun?

 

[Handley_Page]

Do you mean Non-writers ?
But seriously, the whole purpose of the AH is to do exactly that.
And Welcome to a crazy group

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Lay experts are the bane of life.

My grad school work involved a whole lotta courses and thesis and internships. I took all the courses for a Psychology Masters, and all the courses for a Rehab Masters. That is, I graduated knowing a lot about human brains, spinal cords, addictions, and all the disabilities brains are heir to. Plus I spent many years learning how to do psychotherapy, from Freudian analysis to hypnosis.

And I have yet to meet a layman who isn't certain she knows more than I do on the subject. I wasted $65,000 and years and years! The 65K are 1980s dollars. All I really needed was the Discovery Channel and Hillarys IT TAKES A VILLAGE book.

In fairness, tho, I know more medicine than my physician knows. I diagnose my problem and suggest the treatment. Makes him crazy.

Lay experts are facts of life, like getting old.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Do you have something to say...?

You have to have something to say, something to share with others - you DO have something to say and to share.

'Writer's block' is possibly only when you aren't getting down into what you really want to say, or not being prepared to reveal that particular thing or set of ideas or experiences that likely IS there.

...Then again, well, even if you HAVEN'T got anything particular to say, there is always stylism, I call it - but that is an art in itself and is, I would go so far as to say, genuinely part of 'design.' Just like engineered design.

And in either case, frankly, and people aren't generally going to believe this, there really is such a thing as a writer's muse, or 'genius' in the Roman cultural meaning of it. Normally people use the word 'genius' to say that someone is brilliant, but having 'a genius' is to be possessed by a spiritual agency or even a real material physical agency or cause - that is to say, a person/being - that uses you to hack out the literary physical work around some kernel idea of glittering meaningful emotional and psychological substance.

Bad writers haven't got some mysterious force or agency behind them.

Real, experienced writers who ever get to talk between themselves, especially after a lot of wine or stiff drink, are going to refer to the type and colour of her dress... ...that is, of the mysterious and compelling woman who turned towards them from the corner end of the narrowing lane and beckoned them forward, in through the interweaving streets, with the daylight finishing quickly, and finally nearing a patient midnight suffering and maddened they believe they have been offered only a labyrinth in which to be separated and lost.

In anguish they attempt to return to the living in a desparate hope the apparition will yet reappear.

Troubled they go back over their thoughts, ideas, and life, to analyse whether there was something they did to deserve the attentions of the muse.

Life is long though.

And soon one realises that the living - or so once one had assumed they were - are really the as yet unawakened, and it falls upon them, the writer or artist, to ring out the alarms. The divine muses visit ONLY the writers and the artists and not the general public, since the eternal will not personally intervene in the mortal world, but employs messengers who are still halfway between the mortal, and the eternal, to speak of what is real. This life is an illusory movement of shades and shadows while the mortal beings dream in their kind of a sleep which they think is to be alive and awake; what is real, truly real, is what writers must speak of.

You cannot write, unless you have been visited. That is, of course you can commit words to paper or to digital space, but those words will have no life, no force, no power, and no meaning.

 

[hylas_]

I don't mind getting feedback from non-creatives, or creatives in other fields.
You don't need to be good at creating something, necessarily, to be able to see the qualities and flaws in a work, and maybe be able to offer some constructive criticism.
Of course some feedback is useless, but that's also true for advice from people who write themselves.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Do you have something to say...?

You have to have something to say, something to share with others - you DO have something to say and to share.

'Writer's block' is possibly only when you aren't getting down into what you really want to say, or not being prepared to reveal that particular thing or set of ideas or experiences that likely IS there.

...Then again, well, even if you HAVEN'T got anything particular to say, there is always stylism, I call it - but that is an art in itself and is, I would go so far as to say, genuinely part of 'design.' Just like engineered design.

And in either case, frankly, and people aren't generally going to believe this, there really is such a thing as a writer's muse, or 'genius' in the Roman cultural meaning of it. Normally people use the word 'genius' to say that someone is brilliant, but having 'a genius' is to be possessed by a spiritual agency or even a real material physical agency or cause - that is to say, a person/being - that uses you to hack out the literary physical work around some kernel idea of glittering meaningful emotional and psychological substance.

Bad writers haven't got some mysterious force or agency behind them.

Real, experienced writers who ever get to talk between themselves, especially after a lot of wine or stiff drink, are going to refer to the type and colour of her dress... ...that is, of the mysterious and compelling woman who turned towards them from the corner end of the narrowing lane and beckoned them forward, in through the interweaving streets, with the daylight finishing quickly, and finally nearing a patient midnight suffering and maddened they believe they have been offered only a labyrinth in which to be separated and lost.

In anguish they attempt to return to the living in a desparate hope the apparition will yet reappear.

Troubled they go back over their thoughts, ideas, and life, to analyse whether there was something they did to deserve the attentions of the muse.

Life is long though.

And soon one realises that the living - or so once one had assumed they were - are really the as yet unawakened, and it falls upon them, the writer or artist, to ring out the alarms. The divine muses visit ONLY the writers and the artists and not the general public, since the eternal will not personally intervene in the mortal world, but employs messengers who are still halfway between the mortal, and the eternal, to speak of what is real. This life is an illusory movement of shades and shadows while the mortal beings dream in their kind of a sleep which they think is to be alive and awake; what is real, truly real, is what writers must speak of.

You cannot write, unless you have been visited. That is, of course you can commit words to paper or to digital space, but those words will have no life, no force, no power, and no meaning.

What you say is true. Whether I have a writer muse is arguable in many minds, but I can find lost stuff that's been missing forever. Something in me guides me to the stuff. And its stuff I wouldn't recognize if it bit me. The funniest example of it was in Georgia. We were looking for a burial monument in a large cemetery, and I'm perched atop a tombstone with binoculars. I cant find the tombstone but know its there! I can feel it. Duh! I was sitting on it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

You cannot write, unless you have been visited. That is, of course you can commit words to paper or to digital space, but those words will have no life, no force, no power, and no meaning.

A different perspective on this:

"If you’re only going to write when you’re inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you will never be a novelist — because you’re going to have to make your word count today, and those words aren’t going to wait for you, whether you’re inspired or not. So you have to write when you’re not “inspired.” … And the weird thing is that six months later, or a year later, you’re going to look back and you’re not going to remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you wrote because they had to be written." - Neil Gaiman.

Isabel Allende also resonates: "The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up."

I got a lot better at writing once I learned that I can't just wait for the muse to show up. Sometimes I have to start without her and let her join in when she gets there.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Valid comment from Hylas. I mean - in the world of music the best commercial songs often come out of producers' studios who have a good ear for a tune, and yet often can't read a word of sheet music themselves.

There is definitely a role for readers who can critique astutely, afterall the experience is meant to be for the reader, ultimately.

 

[carlieplum]

IIRC, Joseph Conrad's wife used to lock him in a room and wouldn't let him out (despite his screaming and pleading) until he had produced a certain number of pages. So, you can always try that.

Personally, I find deadlines (someone is waiting on me so I have to deliver) and using writing as a way to avoid something I don't want to do are my two biggest motivators. "Oh, I couldn't file the taxes/fold the laundry/trap the raccoon in the garage, I was working on a story. Sorry."

 

[sr71plt]

IIRC, Joseph Conrad's wife used to lock him in a room and wouldn't let him out (despite his screaming and pleading) until he had produced a certain number of pages. So, you can always try that.

For me, there'd have to be a bathroom attached to that room, or there wouldn't be a lick of production.

I did write over 10,000 words today--with my home office door open.

 

[D_Lynn]

Professional advice

There is professional advice available on this topic and others related specifically to the craft of writing. Perhaps the most famous is Stephen King's book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

If you don't have the inclination to read it, here is a link to quotes from it: http://azevedosreviews.com/2013/05/30/stephen-kings-20-quotes-on-writing/. That article contains hyperlinks to other famous writer's views on the craft, as well.

What I've found works best for me when I have writer's block is to simply change my scenery. Get away from my desk and go someplace I haven't been before, or haven't been in quite awhile. For some reason, that type of stimulus shakes the creative side loose again. No idea why.

Hope that helps. Good luck with your writing.

 

[SamScribble]

I guess I was lucky. For the first four or five years of my writing career I didn’t even know what a rejection slip looked like.

And then, one day, a publishing house that had already published one of my books – and done pretty well out of it – rejected the outline for a follow up. I was crestfallen to say the least. But then my agent, a man who had previously had a successful career as a publisher, said: 'You have to remember that every day the publishing industry makes 10 or 20 really good decisions – and maybe 500 really bad ones. In this case, both you know and I know that they got it wrong. Now, let’s move on.'

If the ‘advice’ of professionals can be so hit and miss, do you really want to listen to the wisdom of illiterate amateurs?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I guess I was lucky. For the first four or five years of my writing career I didn’t even know what a rejection slip looked like.

And then, one day, a publishing house that had already published one of my books – and done pretty well out of it – rejected the outline for a follow up. I was crestfallen to say the least. But then my agent, a man who had previously had a successful career as a publisher, said: 'You have to remember that every day the publishing industry makes 10 or 20 really good decisions – and maybe 500 really bad ones. In this case, both you know and I know that they got it wrong. Now, let’s move on.'

If the ‘advice’ of professionals can be so hit and miss, do you really want to listen to the wisdom of illiterate amateurs?

William Styron covers the wisdom and experience of junior editors in SOPHIE'S CHOICE. His principal character rejects a phenomenal best-seller (and is fired). George V. Higgins revealed that his first book, a best seller, was rejected for 17 years.