Thursday, January 14, 2016

Every Day

    I'm trying to keep a daily regime of writing everyday.  I read articles about writing, 'write everyday'. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote an article about her busy schedule on her book tour, 'write a half hour everyday'. If you are a writer, write everyday. Every. Day

    What happens when you don't have an idea? What do you write when you don't know what to write? How do you write everyday when, what you were writing suddenly loses all oomph? No, seriously, I'm asking. I was in the middle of a script and the floor fell through - honestly, it feels like it's gone. What do you do then?

    Do I take up something else and call it 'writing' - I don't think I can. I think that's cheating. Ever feel like something that goes beyond writers block? It just feels dismal and blank. Now I'm just trying not to fall in a great big hole of 'I'm not good enough'. The thing that I think most people go through. You know? That - okay I won a pretty well known contest, was it a fluke? Am I actually good enough? BLECH!!!

    If someone actually reads this blog, I'm taking advice. Seriously, any and all. If you are a creative sort - painter, writer, filmmaker, is there something you do when you've hit a wall? I'll try it. Let me know.

Thanks

7 comments:

  1. Take NyQuil & see what crazy dreams may come? Or read writing that inspires you! Good luck, my dear. You won because you WON!

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  2. Jack Grapes is a good resource for this. Also, Kevin Pollak's podcasts are a great inspiration. It may be out of left field as his conversations are with comedians. Most are writers and their discussion of process is always fascinating,

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  3. Also, a trick that I use often when I have 3-4 projects going. I step back and rank the projects from the ones moving fluidly and with ease to the ones that I seem to be swimming upstream with. I stack them in order from easy to struggle and put my energy into the easiest. The idea is that that the others will be brought up to speed. Every now and then you revisit, reshuffle and restack.

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  4. Don't think to write, write to think. \To get out of the rut of thinking you have to have something to say, grab a book or a poem you like and tell yourself you're going to write down every 5th word (or any other number you want) and do that, then try and string it together into something coherent...even if it is way out there... and before you know it, you have moved off of than insane but fun exercise into creative thoughts sparked from it. It's an exercise I do with my students in writing proficiency classes. Sometimes it actually works :)

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  5. Thanks everyone. I really appreciate all the comments. I'm going to try a few of these!

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