Writing is funsies. It doesn’t matter if no-one reads it, or the world reads it – spitting words onto a page and dragging them about to form sentences is satisfying. I mean that literally, too – My method of writing starts with shoving small magnets with words written on them into my mouth, as many as I can fit, then spitting them at the fridge. After that, it’s just a case of rearranging them into a coherent structure and hoping you’ve got all the words you need. If not, the only thing you can do is try to fit the available words in as best you can and hope it still makes séance.
It’s when that doesn’t work that I start to struggle, and writing things becomes less fun. I really have no idea what to do when I’m stuck for ideas. I sit there for hours, tapping away at the side of my keyboard just for something to do, scraping the figurative barrel of my brain for something I can talk about. The longer I do that for, the worse it gets – and the more I start to convince myself that writing about sausages would be the most entertaining thing in the world.
I like sausages by the way – they are good.
I did that for a little bit today, when I thought ‘Fuck it, I want to write something’. Then someone suggested writing about not being able to write, which isn’t a terrible idea, but comes with a worrying thought that nagged at me. If I write about not being able to write anything, thereby disproving the original claim of not being able to write, is it possible it will create some sort of paradox and destroy the world? Because that wouldn’t be good. If I can get through my life-time without fucking up the order of the universe, I’ll die a happy man. For the record, I’m absolutely terrified of Googling for Google and I will never feed an egg to a chicken. The damage could be immense.
The real point of all this is: I’d really like a way to get over writer’s block. The zombie-themed novel I still claim to be writing sits unfinished in an Open Office file, because I’m stuck for ideas on how to adequately describe the next ’scene’. That, and I worry that it isn’t very good and that pouring hours into it is a waste of time. Yet I can still spend an hour writing absolute shite about nothing- like this.
Perhaps I’m just very boring, and my life is uneventful which gives me nothing to bother writing about, but I should be able to combat that by being a massive liar, or atleast by using a bit of imagination. This creative writing lark is harder than it looks (though almost certainly easier than I make it seem). I don’t want to talk about myself; I want to make up shit and swear and be a prick…in a totally different way to the way I do all of those things in real life.
When I get struck by an idea (which is usually in the minutes before I’m going to sleep), I save a little ‘note’ in my phone, or send myself an email with one on, so I remember it. More often then not though, I forget anyway and the note makes zero sense when I stumble upon it again. For example – I’ve saved a note that just says ‘Sexual Deviants Anonymous’. Now I know I’m not a sexual deviant, or atleast not the type where it’s a big enough problem that there would be a ‘group’ dedicated to it, so I can safely assume it isn’t relating to anything real and was ‘an idea’. However, I’m fucked if I know what it means. If anyone is inspired by those three words, let me know and I’ll be happy to tell your story.
Does anyone have any tips for getting over ‘writer’s block’? Until I figure out how to get over it, I’m just going to keep thowing shit like this at you.
PS – By calling it ‘writer’s block’, I’m not trying to call myself a writer, because I’m really not and it makes me sound like a bit of a knob. I just can’t think of any other way to describe it. It’s a vicious circle.
