Help! I beg you fellow writers!

JesusTheTerrorist

WRITER'S BLOCK!

I don't know what's happened. The used to be so much energy that would flow and flow when I began to write. So much would come out that I dodn't even think about before, the words formed themselves. I wrote to write and it always meant something. I could just feel the urge to write and I would produce something I loved in a minute.

But now, I scratch a few meagre words on paper and they mean nothing. I can't write more than 1 or 2 lines before I dry up. I don't know if the energy is gone, if the talent is gone, or whatever source they came from has gone. But something is gone and I don't know what it was or why it went.

I got a place in an Academy of Arts for my writing. I'm so worried that I won't be able to come up with anything while there. It's a 12 day residential course that demands 12 hours of writing every day. I can't even writefor a minute now without getting stuck.

I don't know what to do! :(

casper leblanc

You say it yourself: you used to write to write, because you felt like it. Now you HAVE to write cause you're in a course. Now there's 'pressure' from the outside. I'm a journalist myself, so I know how it feels to feel the heat of deadlines in my neck. One thing to do: don't think about the exterior context of the course. Don't let that get to you. Think beyond that.

And what always helps me: step outside for a minute, take a walk in fresh air. Let it simmer for a while. Seriously, works wonders gor me.

I'm not a creative writer, but I hope this helps anyway.

Ms. Haiku

Skin a potato, peel a carrot, learn to knit, walk outside. The repetitve stuff blanks the mind, and the walk is always a good idea. Congratulations on your placement in the Academy of Arts, by the way!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Here's an old exercise I wrote: you might like to try it. I hope the preamble is useful....

Vladimir Propp was a Russian Formalist literary critic writing at the early part of the twentieth century. He did a lot of studies of similarities and variations between storytelling conventions. In his work "The Morphology of the Folktale" (1929) he argues that in a conventional narrative, it doesn't matter how many characters a story has but that the characters will fulfil between them seven specific character-functions that drive the action of the tale. He says that a story will usually feature the following 'actants':

1 The hero(ine)
2 The helper
3 The donor (provider)
4 The sought-for person
5 The dispatcher
6 The false hero
7 The villain

Now, when I think of Charles Dickens's "Dombey and Son", I might say that Walter Gay is 1, Captain Cuttle is 2, Sol Gills is 3 (in that he provides the Wooden Midshipman as a meeting place for the novel's cross-social sphere), Florence Dombey is 4 in being the object of Walter's affection (and Walter himself is 4 when he goes missing at sea), Sol Gills is 5 since he goes off abroad in search of the missing Walter, and Carker is both 6 and 7 in that he is a false friend to Paul Dombey and in running off with his wife Edith proves the villain of the piece. So, I'm showing that a character in a story can occupy more than one actantial function. "Hamlet" is more interesting still. Hamlet might be 1, Horatio might be 2, Yorick's skull actantially provides Hamlet with a realisation of his own mortality and therefore is 3, Ophelia or even Gertrude may depending on your critical perspective be 4, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, sent to see Hamlet to England to be literally dispatched whilst ironically ending up dispatched themselves are 5, and Claudius (or even Hamlet himself?) is 7.

Now, I would like you to attempt a short narrative. And I would like you to try to involve each of these actants in your piece. After the end of your piece, please briefly say what character corresponds with what actantial function. Of course, one of the tricks of making this exercise exciting is in fleshing these characters out and making them seem lifelike rather than mere plot-mechanisms.

Have fun!

asphalt

well if you really feel that way even a bit .... try extreme ..... don't sleep for next 50 hours maybe ......
you'll feel like a rebirth ...
with everything bothering your pen ... purged

start then

ISN

drink....develop a burning passionate soul.....disassoctiate yourself from everything humdrum......go to Paris or Madrid.......read Tennessee Williams or Steinbeck......visit a bookshop and on a whim tell them you've never read anything......and read the first book they recommend........go for a long drive......in the sun or the rain......go to the Supermarket and demand to speak to the manager......after you get to speak to him.......tell him that you are in desperate need of a muse, and that God told you the manager of X Supermarket would be your muse.......watch A Beautiful Mind......ring up the Governor and ask him why there are no child-friendly restaurants in your city......tell him that you will blow up the city hall unless they meet yoru demands for child friendly restaurants.......you want clowns.....x-box.....jukeboxes......paper on tables and crayons......play areas......if he doesn't get this ready in two days.......you and your cohorts are gonna blow up city hall.......then go to the liquor store and buy the most expensive wine they have.......drink it.......then go back to the liquor store after buying some popcorn somewhere......pretend the wine gave you allergies.......pretend to sneeze and drop the popcorn all over the shop, and demand that they send a crate of beer over to your house or you will sue their asses.......visit the local mental hospital and tell them that you just moved into the area and that you're schizophrenic and that you want to look around to make sure the facilities are up to scratch......act really weird.....and as you leave......say 'it's great here - I really like it. If I ever get ill this is where I will come'......then ask them if they accept visa.......there will be a bit of confusion, when you pretend that you didn't realise you wouldn't need to pay.....so you drop a big tip on one of the nurses - $5 dollars at least.......ring up the old people's home (locally) and tell them you're looking for your great-uncle John Smith.......they will definitely have a John Smith, and I recommend that you visit him regularly and see to his needs.....and pay for his funeral......

If you do all or some of the above........your muse will return......I can pretty much guarantee it......:)

EvilToasterElf

Writing is WORK, it always has been and it always will be. The key isn't to wait for inspiration, you can't expect every line to devine the meaning of lifes riddles, just sit down and right, look at the last line you wrote, what does that remind you of, what's the next thought, what picture arrives in your mind. I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem and kept all of it. Many times I will sit down, begin to write and realize the poem didn't really begin until the fourth stanza. Hemmingway said the key to good writing is to murder your darlings. Never be afraid to cut a line because it sounds good even though it doesn't fit in the poem. Sit down and write, the inspiration will come, you get ideas from looking at results, and every once and a while you will get an idea and sit down and spray out a brilliant poem in one shot, but the vast majority of good poetry is work, trial and error, constant reflection and calculation, which metaphor fits better, which word has the right sound, texture off the tongue, amount of syllables. Wake up, go to your desk, write a single word. Then what does that word bring up, follow one long train of thought for two pages, then grab 3 lines and repeat the same thing. That's my advice at least.

senecablood

JesusTheTerrorist wrote:

I don't know what to do! :(

Lay off the weed.

senecablood

FinsburyParkCarrots

EvilToasterElf wrote:

Writing is WORK, it always has been and it always will be. The key isn't to wait for inspiration, you can't expect every line to devine the meaning of lifes riddles, just sit down and right, look at the last line you wrote, what does that remind you of, what's the next thought, what picture arrives in your mind. I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem and kept all of it. Many times I will sit down, begin to write and realize the poem didn't really begin until the fourth stanza. Hemmingway said the key to good writing is to murder your darlings. Never be afraid to cut a line because it sounds good even though it doesn't fit in the poem. Sit down and write, the inspiration will come, you get ideas from looking at results, and every once and a while you will get an idea and sit down and spray out a brilliant poem in one shot, but the vast majority of good poetry is work, trial and error, constant reflection and calculation, which metaphor fits better, which word has the right sound, texture off the tongue, amount of syllables. Wake up, go to your desk, write a single word. Then what does that word bring up, follow one long train of thought for two pages, then grab 3 lines and repeat the same thing. That's my advice at least.

I agree with that. The whole concept of writing poetry as some transcendental act of visionary seeing is tied in with a period where the "poet" was commodified for commercial reasons. Byron sold a lot more copy than a novelist such as Jane Austen in his day because people were attracted to the idea of him as some otherworldy, inspired genius. But he did work hard at his poems. Also, Wordsworth's expressionist description of poetry as the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" contradicts evidence that he spent a long time pruning his work.

Yes, work at your writing.

Jaidra

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

1 The hero(ine)
2 The helper
3 The donor (provider)
4 The sought-for person
5 The dispatcher
6 The false hero
7 The villain

Could you give me another example of the false hero?

ISN

this is how I feel about writing....

because [she] has this feeling that much of the writing comes in dreams, or comes in an intuitive way....she meditates, and lights candles.....though she usually has little idea of what she wants to write about, beyond a place and a time

....

Isabel Allende (although I admit, I don't like her books.....but her ideas on writing tie in with my feeling that it's intuitive for me and not cerebral......comes from dreams, from snatches of this and that.....)

I think writing that is methodically produced is dry and soulless......it's easy to go about it in an industrious and technical manner, but what you get is laboured, dry writing which has good technique, but no soul......I disagree with Fins and EvilToasterOaf (hehehehhe - kidding)......I think you need to abandon all ideas of discipline and structure, and have some fun, or some tears, and then see what comes out.......

ISN

plus lay off the ganja......heheheheh

grooveamatic

sometimes i drink lots of coffee and drive...

EvilToasterElf

ISN wrote:

this is how I feel about writing....

....

Isabel Allende (although I admit, I don't like her books.....but her ideas on writing tie in with my feeling that it's intuitive for me and not cerebral......comes from dreams, from snatches of this and that.....)

I think writing that is methodically produced is dry and soulless......it's easy to go about it in an industrious and technical manner, but what you get is laboured, dry writing which has good technique, but no soul......I disagree with Fins and EvilToasterOaf (hehehehhe - kidding)......I think you need to abandon all ideas of discipline and structure, and have some fun, or some tears, and then see what comes out.......

I don't think many disagree that it's a little bit of both, but it's silly to discount the cerebral part of it - feelings don't mean anything, your brain is doing the translating - some translate better than others - if you can't communicate your dreams they just become mind wind

JesusTheTerrorist

Does dope make you less able to write?????? It gives me vivid dreams so I'd imagine it would trigger the imagination. Is it bad though?

I believe writing comes from the inside, that it should come from the soul. I believe there is a sequence to thought.

Feeling - thought - words...

The ability to write is the ability to capture the feeling with thought and capture the thought in words. The ability to write well is told in how the original feeling is preserved.


The problem now is that there are no feelings to preserve, there are no thoughts to write. Whatever starts the motion has stopped. The passion has gone.

It happens in a circle...

It's like emotion.... everything is perfect, and everything seems so nice and it's easy to write and feel emotion... then there comes a rocky day.... and it just feels like a descent into nothing.... then the nothing comes...... and forever there is nothing.... until after eternity..... there's a spark......

and this happens over and over again

FinsburyParkCarrots

Just do all the writing exercises - mundane or interesting - that you can. A great visual artist is always filling up her or his sketchbook with observational studies in a vast variety of forms and styles before producing large works, representational or abstract expressionist. A poet should be the same. You can never get too good to practice the nuts and bolts of writing in different styles, of finding new ways of seeing the world and thus yourself.

The material for literature, however heartfelt and introspective, is in the outside world: the country or the city. If you want to write about deep feelings you need to sharpen and constantly re-edit your ways of using metaphor, imagery and symbolism. And you do that by getting your notebook and practicing all the different metaphors, images and symbols you can think of to describe how you feel.

So you feel numbness. What images convey numbness? How does numbness sound in vowels and consonants?

FinsburyParkCarrots

Writing about interiors, quality of light, smell, all these things can help too. Record everything.

FinsburyParkCarrots

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

The material for literature, however heartfelt and introspective, is in the outside world:

I want to revise this. No, we humans are the stuff of art, but how we describe ourselves needs reference to beyond to bring us to life on the canvas or page. What brings the Mona Lisa to life is the use of sfumato, gradient light and gentle obfuscatory shadow from around her. And it's that quality of light (physical, environmental, historical, political, ideological or religious and/or mystical), or shade from the outside world that shows us "turned out the world thought me": how we respond to that light is what we're after in poetry, I think.

EvilToasterElf

JesusTheTerrorist wrote:

Does dope make you less able to write?????? It gives me vivid dreams so I'd imagine it would trigger the imagination. Is it bad though?

I believe writing comes from the inside, that it should come from the soul. I believe there is a sequence to thought.

Feeling - thought - words...

The ability to write is the ability to capture the feeling with thought and capture the thought in words. The ability to write well is told in how the original feeling is preserved.


The problem now is that there are no feelings to preserve, there are no thoughts to write. Whatever starts the motion has stopped. The passion has gone.

It happens in a circle...

It's like emotion.... everything is perfect, and everything seems so nice and it's easy to write and feel emotion... then there comes a rocky day.... and it just feels like a descent into nothing.... then the nothing comes...... and forever there is nothing.... until after eternity..... there's a spark......

and this happens over and over again

You have to know what to look for but I hold a very high place for drugs specifically hallucinogenics (a gram of mushroom is my favorite state of drug writing) most importantly because drugs offer you a different perspective on the world - (prying open my third eye, as maynard said) I think one of the keys to writing is perspective - I personally am going to try and find mine through travel - when I returned home from my semester abroad I wrote like a maniac - you have to question how you perspective has changed as a result of being high, how have your thoughts changed ( mostly they come faster - I think on mushrooms you mind becomes a tornado and the thoughts that come are simply debris being thrown out of the maelstrom) but just smoking a bowl isn't going to bring a poem into life - it's still a process - just use the drugs with the advice finsbury has been giving you and explore the perspective - here's a poem I wrote about pot:

Stoned

A small bedroom sits unkempt
Socks of both white cotton and navy blue nylon hang
From the ends of half open drawers
adolescent sailors on their maiden voyage
vomiting over the bow as their vessel rocks

past the treacherous seas of lava lamps
bright red luminescence covers a blue
down blanket, as gales spit fury in globs
from the base of the lamp, the brightness
of the light moves from place to place, north
south from pillows to the foot of the bed

the blanket takes on it’s own cycle of day and night
stormy and calm, all determined by a shifting
shapeless color, powered by electricity from
the socket that sits noiselessly behind a bookcase
against the windowed wall facing the mild afternoon

A door opens slowly, muscles overwhelm
The force of friction
Created by the heaps of multicolored sweaters,
Yellow and red tie-die t-shirts, and hemp paraphernalia
So that five people can enter the room
Stumbling first, giggling second
Staring through stoned eyes, funhouse mirror lenses
That makes the sunlight appear as if it is
Sliding back and forth over the blinds,
they wipe their hands on
Corduroy pants and stare down to
clammy sweat coated palms

the room is assaulted by an odor of cheap tacos
candles cover bookcases and a dusty desk
while incense fights feverishly to regain control
of the room’s personal aroma
but the fast-food junkies are too high to notice
riding spiral straws in Styrofoam cups through the stratosphere
Bursting through rain clouds eating lightning

Stopping only to punch through the o-zone with
A forceful drum beat before passing the pipe

Floating on clouds the unshaven polytheists
Discuss Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia
And the other minor guitar Gods

Beating rhythms against their thighs
Sprawled in a semi-circle
So far from Arthur’s Camelot, but only a thought away
Amazed by the weed’s potency
So amazed they barely have enough words at hand to describe it
They stumble over token phrases

Staring into the fire, strengthened by lungs
Black rises to orange, and settles again to darkness
“yeah, where’d you get it?”

Sucking bliss through colored swirls of glass
Greens and blues and yellows coalescing
Rainbow colored smoke sinks into their blood
And peace into their smiles, half crooked and uncaring
“my boy hooks me up, you know how it goes”

Laughing and grunting like their ancestors
Painting a canvas of optimism with brushes of desire
Motion becomes unnecessary as they sink further
Into that primordial seas of human emotion and let
It wash over them, eroding to that cavernous
Labyrinth in their genetic code
Travelling down the endless roadways carved in trails of light
On the back of their eyelids
And as each lane narrows and you follow the light to an old girlfriend
Or yourself headlining Madison Square garden
When the lights dim and your microphone is a podium
Giving a state of the union that begins with, under this administration
Tyranny has ended
“Pot has been legalized!”



Licking dry, cracked lips
Imagining a waterfall rushing into their throats
Slurping from the sink will have to do

The conversation meander to conjecture in a stream of consciousness

“The trees are dying”
“The rainforests disappear”
“Bush is a fuckin’ asshole”
“Sunoco and Paul Bunyan in one”
“Paul Bunyan riding in an SUV”

The crowd disperses while smoke lingers
like a gathering storm, cool air from a fan in
the corner of a room rushed into the warm herb front
ready to break onto phish posters and spray
the crust speckled carpet with it’s toxins
noiseless but potent, repulsive to lurking
little sisters

The crowd of enlightenment seekers falls into
The niches of the house
Couches
Lazyboy Reclining Chairs
Or beds
And pass out

ISN

I am anti-drugs, and don't agree with Fins....I think you've already figured out how to write......feeling to thought to expression.....and now you need to have some things/experiences which make you passionate......I didn't read it, but I don't think a poet should be expected to hone their art like someone who is drawing or painting......go out get stoned (but remember, I'm anti-drugs).....go out get wasted.....fukkin get some anxiety.....have some sex......listen to a little PJ.....Dylan.....Young etc, and then.....only then.....stay awake all night and ask yourself why you even care......and then drink a little bit.......you'll be a complete basket case, but you'll be able to write poetry and other stuff (hehhehehehe......my speech teacher told me nivvir to say 'and other stuff'......hehehehehe).......

(disclaimer......if you are 16, please disregard all the above, although I really think teenagers understand angst a lot more anyway)......

Traver DiDiminico

zen baby. stop caring. remember annata (sp?) (annata=the nothingness of being), then then get wasted and you feel a lot better. Sex is good, too