Question:
I’ve seem to be hitting writer’s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don’t turn in anything because I’m never really satisfied with anything I do. All my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once I write it down.
Answer:
You turn off your inner critic. You do not listen to your inner police force. You ignore the little voices that tell you that it’s all stupid, and you keep going.
Your grade isn’t suffering because your writing is bad, it’s suffering because you aren’t finishing things and handing them in.
So, finish them and hand them in. Even if a story’s lousy, you’ll learn something from it that will be useful as a writer, even if it’s just “don’t do that again”.
You’re always going to be dissatisfied with what you write. That’s part of being human. In our heads, stories are perfect, flawless, glittering, magical. Then we start to put them down on paper, one unsatisfactory word at a time. And each time our inner critics tell us that it’s a rotten idea and we should abandon it.
If you’re going to write, ignore your inner critic, while you’re writing. Do whatever you can to finish. Know that anything can be fixed later.
Remember: you don’t have to be brilliant when you start out. You just have to write. Every story you finish puts you closer to being a writer, and makes you a better writer.
Blaming “Writer’s Block” is wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the “block”. It gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy.
But it’s probably more honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting Stuck. If you’re being lazy, don’t be. If you’re being a perfectionist, don’t be. And if you’re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make it work, and then start writing again.
-NEIL GAIMAN
Originally posted at http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/18848712919/reposted-as-something-that-can-be-reblogged-on.
I love the pragmatism here that cuts through the emotional side of writing, doesn’t give any excuses to the typical writer’s lament. Reminds me that, “something finished now is always better than something in perpetual editing.” The more we execute, the more we fail, the better we become. Will have to reprint this and add to the writing wall.
I love this. Especially about how stories are perfect in our heads and less perfect once we’ve put them down. I feel like as soon as you take the essence of something and you try to capture it in language, it’s bound to lose something…you have to fight past that anyway and write it down as near to what you thought as you can.
Awesome thoughts. Thanks for posting.
I object. The affliction described is no writer’s block, it’s just poor confidence.
Writers block is, most commonly, when you no longer get any ideas or inspiration. Though, I mostly suffer from a different and more severe type: I will sit by my computer and know exactly what I want to write, my head full of ideas and plans and inspiration, yet find myself physically incapable of writing the words. My writing is blocked in a very literal sense, almost as if there was an invisible force keeping me from reaching my keyboard, or keeping my mind from formulating the sentences. It’s not a matter of confidence or some inner critic: The words simply aren’t there anymore.
I understand this is very uncommon, though, so maybe it shouldn’t be called writer’s block. “Writer’s paralysis”, perhaps?
Anyway, with all due respect to Mr Gaiman – whom I do admire a lot – but anyone who argues that writer’s block is just an excuse has probably never actually experienced it.
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Yesterday, while I was at work, my cousin stole
my iPad and tested to see if it can survive a forty foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation.
My iPad is now destroyed and she has 83 views.
I know this is entirely off topic but I had to share it with someone!