So uninspired...

[Star of Penumbra]

Dammit. I haven't written anything in almost two months. It used to be an everyday activity, but now, even when I have a good idea that I really like, I can't seem to turn out anything decent, if at all.

Has this ever happened to you? What did you do about it? How long did it last?

*sigh*

 

[NoJo]

Writers Block

In my case, about 40 years

Seriously, though, I think that we all need to rest, and gather "food" for stories sometimes -- we just need to "go and live" for a while and let something, or someone, trigger a new story.

(Of course, in the case of erotica, "practical research" can get a little tricky, especially if you're married).

Maybe your latest ideas are not "fully-fledged" enough to be stories yet.

My father, who is 86, has been a professional writer for many, many years. I'm still amazed at his ability to pick up story ideas from "real life", whether it's a news item, a movie, or even an overheard snippet of conversation at a bus stop.

He seems to manage to observe the world, and yet still be a part of it. That's a great way of trying to live, and has probably helped him live so long.


Joe.

 

[Couture]

I've not run in to the situation of not having anything to write about. With me I just don't feel like putting the effort in. The worse is when you write and you think it is crap.

 

[medjay]

I seldom suffer from writer's block. My problem is that I'm way too over critical of my work. I'll have great ideas, start writing and, after a while, get frustrated because the piece isn't coming out as good as I think it should be. Then I step away from it and a lot of times fail to return.

All this despite the fact that everyone who reads my stuff thinks it's great. I'm my own worst critic and it keeps me from being prolific.

I do also suffer from occasional lack of inspiration. I started posting stories at Lit because I felt it would make me get back into the habit of writing regularly. And it did until I began to get bored with the idea of writing erotic stories. I haven't written anything in a couple of months but I'm still here because I'm addicted to the Boards.

 

[Quasimodem]

I believe it is no secret, that the sovereign remedy for writer's block is to keep writing!

Don't sit around waiting for a "good idea" to show up, before you start writing. That way, you are training your writer's muscle not to write.

Do exercises, experimental writing; start a journal. Read someone else's story, then do an in-depth analysis of what in your opinion worked, and why. Also, what in your opinion did not work, and why.

You may submit your critique to the author if you wish, or keep it to yourself, if you prefer. This is an exercise in writing, not in how to start a flame war.

Eventually, you will get so bored, that you will come up with an idea you really wish to write. (If only in self defence!) At that point, your writer's block has vanished, and you are back to writing.

 

[wildsweetone]

hmmm

forgive me but i have no notion of what it's like to have this writer's block you mention.

for me, i have found that it's only possible to be creative in one way at a time. it's not a 'block' that i get, it's a preference.

for the last eight months it's shown in the written form. prior to that it was drawing. i seem to alternate between creativities.

maybe it's your time to switch for a while?

whatever it is, relax, go with the flow. worrying and fighting against it won't improve matters.

 

[Coolville]

i've made a successful career out of writing and i can tell you that 'writer's block' is a curse that strikes all of us. what do you do? you think about it, you procrastinate, you become tortured.
What I do, among other things, is read famous quotes about writing. Star of Penumbra - here you go... a long list of quotes by famous writers and I hope that it helps somehow... at least it's a displacement activity...

here they come...

If you don't have trouble writing, if you think it's a breeze, let me tell you something - you're either not a writer or you're doing it wrong.
Colville Andersen

Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
Anaïs Nin

I loved Feydeau's one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect as long as I don't see Character B. Knock Knock. Enter Character B.
John Guare

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
Rod Serling

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.
Norman Mailer

Writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painfull illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon one can neither resist nor understand.
George Orwell

I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand.
Chinese proverb

I shall live bad if I do not write and I shall write bad if I do not live.
Francoise Sagan

This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated, if you ask me.
Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne)

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Robert Frost

Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment thereafter
Jessamyn West

When you start writing you're 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you've written for a length of time, you've learned a great deal about your craft, and you've become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It's like writing uphill.
David Westheimer

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.
Paul Rudnick

The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
Anais Nin

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.
Truman Capote

The first draft of everything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway

Writers are lucky. Whatever the mood, no matter the longing, the writer can use his words to connect himself to any world he wishes to visit.
Alan Zweibel

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
Somerset Maugham

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought; there is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
Victor Hugo

The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.
Janet Frame

Today is a dawdly day. They do seem to alternate. I do a whole of a day's work and then the next day, flushed with triumph, I dawdle....The crazy thing is that I get about the same number of words down either way.
John Steinbeck

Writers write about what obsesses them.
Anne Rice

Anybody can become a writer, but the trick is to STAY a writer.
Harlan Ellison

I've only written a tenth of what I know-- and they're already screaming.
Albert Camus

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin

Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.
Catherine Drinker Bowen

The writer is by nature a dreamer-- a conscious dreamer.
Carson McCullers

A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all.
William Sansom

I shall live bad if I do not write and I shall write bad if I do not live.
Francoise Sagan

Writers have an island, a center of refuge, within themselves. It is the mind's anchorage, the soul's Great Good Place.
Wright Morris

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Robert Frost

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.
William Gass

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't help it.
Leo Rosten

Writers are only rarely likable.
Joan Didion

A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.
Edward Albee

The whole world can be divided into those who write and those who do not write.
Soren Kierkegaard

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
Jules Renard

Fifty years old and still only a writer!
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.
Pete Hamill

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
H. L. Mencken

Fuck the writers.
Frank Capra

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
Peter De Vries

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.
Don Marquis

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.
Jules Renard

I like to think of the world I created as being a kind of keystone in the universe; that, small as the keystone is, if it were ever taken away the universe itself would collapse.
William Faulkner

...write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after.
Ernest Hemingway

 

[NoJo]

Great quotes, Coolville! Especially Winnie the Pooh - that genius!

I remember a cartoon in "Private Eye" -- a UK satire magazine that was a cross between The New Yorker and The Onion:
Two people are standing talking at a cocktail party.

One is saying:

"I'm writing a book at the moment."

"Neither am I," replies the other.

 

[SexyChele]

Yes, I've felt uninspired from time to time. I hate it! I used to give in and simply not write anything - and it would only get worse. Since then, I've learned to write something at least once a day. Even if it is just describing some I saw during my day. Most of the time it's crap, but writing is like excersing. Well, at least to me.

Just keep writing, Star. Something, anything every day. I do believe all writers suffer from writer's block at one time or another. Just keep going.

 

[Guest]

Writer's block simply doesn't exist for me...my only problem is the crunch.

The crunch is trying to cram 72 hours worth of interests into 16 hours of useful daylight.
I just can't seem to find the time to write recently.
To many other things have been successfully winning the time slot lottery with me lately.

 

[Coolville]

yeah, sub joe, seen that one. cool.
The Guardian had a cartoon series called Ars Brevis - I think - in which they took the piss out of writers and writer's block and all that.

magic.

 

[NoJo]

Why, I deduce old chap you must be a dem British person as am I, in that case. I suppose I shall be obliged to watch my 'p''s and 'q's from now on.

But the acid test: Do you know why Brazilans are such great lovers?

 

[Coolville]

ohwite me ol' diamond, my son? half danish half english actually. during the Cup I was rooting for Dengland and Engmark... (two real winners there...)
do tell, do tell... I'm stumped...
Do you know why Brazilans are such great lovers?

 

[NoJo]

I've PM-ed it.

 

[wildsweetone]

i'm not sure that's legal...

how am i going to get any rest now eh??? i am wondering about Brazilians!

 

[wildsweetone]

thank you dear

 

[Quint]

To digress from Brazilian lovers...

(Although I am brimming with curiosity myself!)

I have been told by people whose works I've edited that the review and criticism fueled their drive to take another look at a work they thought long locked-away. Perhaps running what you have by a willing sadist would help you, as well.

(Plug! Plug, you bastards! Plug for your lives!)