When writing becomes hard...
First and foremost - this is not a 'please massage my ego' blog. I am not after platitudes; I have a genuine problem right now, and I really need some help!
Before I joined the Cloud, writing was as easy as falling off a log for me - I just did it. I could easily rattle off ten pages at a time, and at one point (before I had my daughter, of course!) I was writing around 6-8,ooo words a week. They weren't perfect, ofc course, but the creative juices were indeed flowing.
Now, all that has changed. Since deciding to make a conscious effort to improve my writing technique, writing has become the hardest thing in the world to do. Take today, for example: the little one is tucked up for her nap, and so I thought I'd get on with some writing. Once upon a time, that would have meant a good three or four pages. Today? Five sentences. I do not kid - it has taken me an hour to write five measly sentences. In the end, I did the unthinkable and actually made a worksheet for my year 10's tomorrow... yep, I did work over creating. Not good!
I don't know what is wrong with me. I just feel crippled - that in trying to shape my style into something more socially acceptable (got to get it licked into shape if I want to be published!), I've lost every scrap of confidence that I had in my ability to put words together and tell a story. What was once easy and fun is at the moment hard and difficult. I want to do it, but for some reason I feel clumsy and awkward, like I am forcng something rather than just letting it happen.
I've had writer's block before, but this is different... this isn't a lack of ideas, or not knowing where to go with a story; it's deeper than that. Has anyone else ever had this? And if you have - how on earth did you get through it?!
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9 Comments
I feel in a kind of limbo, not knowing if my writing is worth publishing, I am finding it hard to write at all and even harder to start the sequel to the finished book.
This in my case is undoubtedly a loss of confidence following exhaustive re-writes and edits before my first novel was finished. It is a fact that the harder you try, the harder it becomes to make any head-way.
What I have done to get moving again is just plow on with my new project in the knowledge that it is rambling and drifting but at least I am getting words down. The first edit will be painful but at least I might have something to edit.
I'm not sure if you're problem is exactly as i'm imagining, but from what you've described it sounds more like you don't know how to write at the moment. Like, you have the ideas ready but you don't know how to go about writing any of them. It's the style or the words that aren't working right now.
I say just write whatever the hell comes out of those keys (or that pen/pencil).
Good luck!
Yes - this is *exactly* how it feels. I would even go as far as to say it is a glass door - I can see what is onn the other side, I just can't break through and get there, and it is *horrible*!
It is comfort to know that others have experienced this. In the past, I just wrote what I wrote and got on with it, but ever since I decided to consciously make stylistic decisions in a real effort to take on board the critique I have received here, everything has just collapsed. I tried to just 'write something' earlier, and before I knew it, I was agonsing again. Never has the phrase 'poop or get off the pot' ever felt so apt!
Joey - I hardly ever write first drafts on the computer, because for some reason I can't think when I type! At the moment, I am staring at a page with more scribbles and crossing-outs on it than one should have to... I've begun about 3 pieces of writing today, and all of them are crap. It's driving me nuts!!
I'm actually thinking of starting something completely new - just putting the current projects to one side for a bit and writing something for fun as opposed to writing something that I might like to try and send to a publisher. I do worry about how others perceive my writing, and feel acutely that I must show others that I have taken on board the advice / critique they have given me. Since it is all from a stylistic point of view, its not so much a case of writing down ideas as re-learning how to think about writing down ideas.
I think that writing is a form of art and an artist's mind cannot remain shackled. A painter expresses beauty by mixing colours, a singer can express emotion by the use of his or her voice, and so it should be that a writer should express life by using words in the best way his mind is able to do so. Is it not, after all, about the mind of the artist? And is it not that it is the greatest writers who make us fall in love with their characters (even when we detest the character). So is it that the greatest characters have been created out of a desire to please the reading public or the desire to reflect the reality of mankind? Or maybe it's a genius combination of both?
I say write to your heart's content and let the end take care of itself.
The one thing that I can surmise from the replies, for both of us, is that we should maybe just write for the love of it as opposed to trying to combine the art with the science - by that, I mean 'licking it into shape' or adapting style to what you believe someone in an authoritative position might prefer. Sod it. Just write for you, at least for a little while; try something completely new and unexplored, perhaps.
There's my tuppence worth anyway, not that I'm of much use at the moment!
It's really putting me off writing, I'm not enjoying it any more.
So I decided to put the novel aside for a while, and having been writing humourous blogs, just for fun, which has at least stopped me from hating writing.
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