A friend asked for tips. I started to write her this message and it got long enough, I figured I might as well slap it up here. So here’s what I do. How about you?
About writers block -
I don’t know if this stuff works for other people but here’s stuff I do for me.
One, I commit to writing something. And when that’s hard, and it often is, I will do so for defined times (like say 10 minutes or 15), and I use a free stop watch program. If I can’t make myself write anything of substance then I write about how much writing sucks and how I hate what I’m currently writing. That gets super old after 5 minutes and I usually start to then write about something else out of boredom.
Two, I edit those bits, and bits from email and blog and facebook into longer pieces. I do that, and I also try to write short pieces, because it feels good to finish things and that good feeling helps me a little, and I need all the help I can get because writing sucks.
Three, separate out the different moments of writing – brainstorming possible topics/things to write about eventually, brainstorming a specific piece, planning a piece/outlining, and writing about the substance of a piece. (I also don’t really outline until after I’ve done a lot of really bad meandery writing. That kind of reverse outline is very painful but it works well.) When I move between these different facets of writing in one session it’s kind of like biking for 2 minutes then running 2 minutes then cooking for 5 minutes – I get basically nothing done because I find the transitions really jarring. I can sort of sometimes go from free writing/meandering into more planning/outlining but I can’t do the reverse at all, I have to take a break and clear my head and write elsewhere.
Four, cultivate the courage to suck. Show shitty drafts to people. Make them talk about it. I learn more from conversation and from speaking out loud than I do from writing. I put stuff out when I want to have people talk with me about the core themes and I dont wait to iron out stuff, because if I wait till I feel comfortable I would never put stuff out. I feel slightly inadequate and nervous every single time I put something out for other people to read, and I often feel much more than slightly so. These feelings have gotten slightly less intense as I’ve gotten older but only slightly. Mostly I’ve just gotten better at acting despite them, kind of like how I rock climb despite a fear of heights.
Five, talk. Preferably while moving. I do my best thinking while walking. I sometimes pretend to be on the phone because I’m self conscious about talking to myself in public. I talk like I’m giving a public presentation of a piece of writing or just thinking out loud. after doing this a few times I often leave myself voicemails summing up the key points. And this is somewhat efficient: depending on speaking speed, it takes about ten or twenty minutes to read a ten page/2500 word paper out loud. Which means that talking out loud for ten minutes generate words equivalent to about ten pages. (I also edit out loud, and I edit by reading over my stuff a whole bunch of times, and sometimes I read it over a few times then talk off the top of my head about it without speaking the prose I wrote. That usually improves my writing.)
Six, figure out what motivates you. I like being complimented and praised and I like a sense of accomplishment but that doesn’t really motivate me. It’s nice but I don’t do stuff because of it. I’m motivated to write when there’s a puzzle I want to sort out, I like the excitement of figuring stuff out, it’s very individualistic for me. That results in part in me writing a lot of partial things, because I get things figured out enough that I stop there.
And I’m motivated by fear of penalties and embarassment. If I commit to writing something for someone else who I know will give me a hard time, or who I know will be offended/hurt if I don’t write it for them, so there are real personal consequences of some sort, I generally get whatever it is written.
Seven, I talk about what it is I want to write and why – what’s the part that I care about? I write that down and put it somewhere or I say it on the phone enough times that I basically memorize it. I revisit that occasionally to get myself energized a bit and re-committed to writing. And like I sort of said above, I write despite not feeling energized, which is unpleasant but do-able. It’s like exercising. If I only worked out when I wanted to, I’d almost never do so. But by working out even when I don’t want to, I get better at it and I want to do it more.
thanks so much friend, for posting this. i think where i am is i have many thoughts in my mind, and many sad feelings attached to them. i want to write them, but they trigger sad emotions and that becomes my hurdle. i can’t write past the emotional block. i feel like i am babbling about this mess of feelings and there is no substance. this happens to me, and usually talkin about it helps. and valuing the fact that i have something important to say especially because it is painful.
thanks for this. i know i need to start with the 10 -15 min free writes. its always been something important and healing to me but i get so damn fuckin lazy lol
Oh – also, some friends and I have started doing writing dates occasionally. We’ll meet then walk a bit while we talk about what we’re gonna write. Then we sit and we anti-hangout, typing on our laptops. I look up and my friend’s hard at work, I get back to work instead of checking my email or whatever. And then I have the same effect on my friend. Afterward we talk about how it went, including being honest about how diligent we were/how much we messed around. That is super helpful.
hey sorry your comment got moderated and you’re totally welcome!
I also think that it’s worth thinking about what you think the writing process looks like for a given topic. I tend to think of writing as I start at page one and write to the ending and then it’s done. But that’s totally not how it works. I may start at what ends up being page five, write up to page eight then write what ended up being page 12 through 14. And for some longer pieces (like this one – http://libcom.org/blog/occupy-vs-eviction-radicals-reform-dispossession-22062012) I collected lots of bits and pieces and notes over time. So in a way I was writing it for many weeks before I was generating much in the way of real prose. Maybe that’s the way to go for the stuff you’ve got percolating. If you write a bit about it at a time for a long while you’re still writing it. I’d say it’s best to write more and make yourself write as much as you can stand to write, but that doesn’t mean you have to write any one particular thing the whole time. I write a lot of notes and stuff to come back to later. (This is a short piece made up of stuff from many email etc conversations – http://libcom.org/blog/hypotheses-reform-repression-united-states-31052012 Don’t feel compelled to actually read those pieces I just put them up as examples to show how I’ve done different things to deal with the difficulties of writing, and that I’ve managed to finish those pieces eventually.)
I also do well if I have more than one project, so I can play them off against each other – work on one as a way of procrastinating on another.
Heh, interesting stuff… I find pacing in circles and coming back to stuff erratically, is always helpful, even though it looks literally like an insane person. I get similar thought-stimulation from walking the streets I guess, only thing is I only do that on my way to somewhere and it’s less helpful because I can’t instantly sit back down and write when I want to. If I’m not pacing, twitching or fidgeting somehow also helps me think, so basically physical movement helps me think better. Sometimes I instinctively mumble things which reminds of your phone-to-self thing, again it looks/feels like a crazy person but it gets the brain moving.
I quit college long ago but I back deadlines, while annoying, usually got me working way faster via compulsion (my proudest essays were written “under the gun,” usually after much procrastinating), only problem is occasionally I’d have crappy essays and have no chance to revise them. I’ve gotten way lazier/had less compelling reasons to obey deadlines since then, so it’s not helpful anymore. And I know others who write very differently from me (way longer/more meandering process, thinking-on-paper etc.) who hate class deadlines due to the stress involved. I think manageable stress is mentally provoking for me which is why it sometimes helps me write.
About drafts and writing process, this varies according to topic, level of mental mapped-out-ness of a piece before writing etc., but I find typically two types of drafting process work best. One, write a sloppy draft piece and then review it, have others look at it, etc., – this would be a conventional drafting process. The other, for me, is sort of like outlining but more disorganized (personally I find well-organized outlines to be a waste of time, because either you haven’t planned your piece out in which case it’s not a true outline, or you have planned it in which case you don’t need the outline because it’s already in your head). I’ll write parts of the essay and insert bracketed notes like this:
[quote from Nate's blog about writing, something about drafting/outlining process]
Those are like markers that help me get the piece written out enough to keep me moving, while skipping the prosaic and grammatical phases of writing. I can’t say I’ve seen other people write like that so I flatter myself that it’s a really ingenious thing of mine, but I like I said it’s basically just a half-rough draft/half-outline.
Last thought, I find writing infinitely easier when it’s responding to something else, which is where discussion/debate is fun as is document analysis. That’s a totally different animal from say, writing literature, or personal reflections or something like that. I dislike and have a hard time with more personal or emotionally-laden writing, At that level writing for me is more like playing tennis or something to get metaphorical (bouncing ideas back and forth, refuting someone else’s bad ideas, repeating good ones etc.), whereas writing fiction is sorta like inventing a new card game or something, and personal writing I guess is like playing solitaire, something you do on your own not with others.
Thanks Kevin. I do the bracket thing too, glad I’m not the only one. I do them in two ways I think and both are all about keeping myself writing. One is to bracket off stuff that I know is an exciting distraction. So like if I’m managing to follow a line of thought that’s a lot of work and I find myself writing an aside that could grow into something I really want to follow I’ll bracket it to come back to when I have less energy, because those bits tend to be easy to write so I figure why waste my rare high energy and more disciplined moments writing stuff I could write even when I’m low energy and low discipline. The other is to bracket off stuff that I’m really nervous/intimidated about and that I feel like I really, really need to write but am not yet up to writing. In the past I’d just stop writing because of that stuff. Now I write bracketed bits to mark that there’s work to do there later and I write what I’m currently able. That helps a lot, and I often find that in writing the bracketed comments I make some progress on that hard stuff.
And I totally agree that it’s way easier to write in conversation.
That reminded me, hojindetroit, a thought I had about your comment, you might try this, I dunno if it’d work but it might be worth a shot – ask someone you trust emotionally and who is open to talking about writing to meet with you. Talk to them out loud about what you want to write about/what you’re having trouble with and ask them to take notes. Tell them what the thing is you want to write about/the content, tell them why it matters to you personally/why you want to write that thing, and tell them what you’re thinking in terms of format – a short piece/long piece, analytical vs story piece, etc, and what work you may need to do to write it – research, outline, rough draft/free write, etc. Then have them talk to you afterward where they tell you back a summary of what they heard you said, have them walk you through their notes to make sure you got all the key points down, and take the copy of the notes. then have them tell you what they, as your reader, would like you to do/say more about and what the stuff you said makes them think of, and you take notes during that. And ask them not to argue you with you (at least that’d be important to me) until you’re much further in the writing process. Then type up the notes and send it to them in an email and ask them to follow up with you in a week or a month or whatever feels reasonable to you, about how you’re writing is going.
thanks for all these dope suggestions. writing is so awesome, and so hard, and so fruitful.kevin, i get you about the last min writing — some of my best writings come when i do that, and have no choice but to write lol. i think i have to come to terms with how much stress is a driver in my life and how much i fuckin crave adrenaline. makes up for all the time i waste otherwise:)
im gonna try the talking thing. and the writing date thing. i think reading too is super helpful. to read how other people write, and find authors that inspire me, have brought me back to the writing table.
i hope to have something useful to share with you all soon
<3