I Lost My Groove

DeadRooster on Sun, 25th Oct 2009 6:52 am 



It’s probably not that you don’t have any ideas, it’s that the ideas you do have are not interesting enough to you to get you to write about them.

Harlan Ellison once said that a real writer can write about any subject and make it interesting. He used to do a stunt where he sat in a store window with his typewriter and let someone give him a random title. He then immediately began writing a story and didn’t stop typing until the story was complete.

The trick is getting in the mood to write. Don’t wait until you find a subject fun enough to write about—you may not find it for weeks! Just pick something and start writing; the act of writing will get you in the mood to write.

I wrote an article about this and it is my most popular post ever with nearly 100,000 pageviews:

How to get in the Mood to Write

Read that and see if it helps.

Good luck, Angela!

kathleenmaher on Tue, 27th Oct 2009 7:24 am 



Sometimes exercises or triggers such as DeadRooster suggests really work. But, personally, I think most writers face a time when they have little choice but to wait out their writer’s block one way or another.
Sometimes a block makes you sit in front of a blank screen and just concentrate for as long as you can or however much time you routinely allot for writing. That can be really hard: sitting there and not writing every day. So hard that before long you’ll be writing something–just because you can’t bear not writing.That doesn’t mean you’ve burst through the block, though, which can be really insidious.
For two years I worked on a novel–I think I was trying something autobiographical, which has never worked for me–that finished was ill-conceived.
It took me a few months after I’d written to recognize that those two years were blocked years.
Then, too, I started my blog to overcome obsessive re-writing, which is another kind of block that few writers discuss. The standard advice is to re-write without cease. But if you’re polishing the same ten pages for months and months, you’re stuck. By forcing yourself to post whatever you came up with that day or week can get you going again. It worked for me. Next time, however, it might not.
For all the advice, however, every writer must find what works for her. And sometimes that means stepping back for several months–a scary idea for someone whose identity depends on writing. In those cases, I write letters and lists (and really long comments) to keep the sentences flowing until the stories return.

John J Savo on Sat, 31st Oct 2009 6:02 pm 



Funny you should ask, because after a summer of not writing, dealing with family and business stuff, I’m back to blogging. Yeah, I revamped the auction website and I have added a blog to it. There’s one article on there now. The second one is coming this weekend sometime. So be sure to visit and subscribe.

http://SavoAuctioneers.com
direct to the blog: http://SavoAuctioneers.com/blog

P.S. I missed you too.

kipstreg on Mon, 16th Nov 2009 12:59 am 



Yo,Angela.Miss you heaps.Don’t worry,your groove will return.But,I would like to know how those fabulous herbs of yours are going in your raw food kitchen.Keep smiling,girl.

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