Write. Just WRITE! Please write..?

So, you’re writing. You’re in the right headspace, you’ve got a firm grasp on your characters. The story is just clear enough in your head that you have an idea of what will eventually happen, but just VAGUE enough that, really, you don’t have the slightest freaking CLUE what comes next...

That’s part of the fun! Choosing your plot points and playing connect the dots with them.

But then... shock of shocks... you get distracted. By what? Does it matter? Your toaster explodes, your room catches fire, your cat does the watoosie...

You reach to scratch an itch on your back and when you look back at the computer screen, you’ve lost it. It’s gone! It has abandoned you. All you can do is stare at the last paragraph you wrote, reading it over, and over... and over...

...and over...

...and getting nothing out of it. You think to yourself, “Why did he say that? Should he really be this angry in the scene..? I know I was on a roll with this... I was headed somewhere! There is a PUNCHLINE to this JOKE!”

But what was it?

You’re lost. Maybe you’re tired? You glance up at the clock. It’s nearing midnight. Okay, so maybe your brain just decided to shut itself down for the night. Happens to the best of us!

Except you’ve stayed up till 3 am before... till DAWN! Your creative juices don’t even really getting flowing until the moon is on its way down. So what the effing frickety blargh?! Why can’t you write something now?! You spent the entire day THINKING about these characters! Pondering what should happen in this scene! Their faces and their emotions and their intentions were emblazoned on your brain, and yet... somehow... now it’s all gone from you.

You must be tired. Maybe you should go to sleep? You’ll pick up on this in the morning and you’ll feel refreshed...

Except, no... because this is Saturday night. This is THE night you get to stay up as late as you need to and bang out this story! Every other night, you have to cut yourself off before you’ve carried your thought process fully to the end because you have work the next day. And every morning, before work, you have about ten minutes of “Eureika!” time before you realize you’re FIFTEEN minutes late!

NOW is when you must write! You must write NOW! RIGHT NOW! WRITE!

Nothing’s coming... Awww, sweet merciful christ on a pogo stick, where has you muse gone?! Where’s the inspiration?! What happened? Is this the worst? Has the same thing that happens with every other long-term project you’ve ever attempted happened yet again? Has the concept flown from you? Are you just not in touch with it anymore? Are you just going to shelve this idea and move on to another in the long list of stuff you havent finished?

NO! Noooooohohohooooo... Oh dear god, no...

You’ve lost it!

But... maybe not... maybe you just need something to get the juices flowing again.

YES. That’s what you need... Something to get your fingers moving. To wake up your muse. To slap those characters awake and MAKE them tell you what happens next.

YES!

So, you go online. Why? Because you’re a part of a writing community that provides just this sort of inspiration for you all the time. And while you’re at it, go make yourself some coffee -- you’ve got shit to DO tonight, mister! You’re not going to sleep defeated! You will conquer this Writer’s Bloc--NO! Don’t call it that. Writer’s Block is the enemy. Writer’s Block is the mind killer. Writer’s Block is that little nothing that brings total oblivion. Nothing has power until you give it a name, and WRITER’S-FUCKING-BLOCK has the biggest baddest name of them all!

So no, we will not call this writer’s block -- we wont even dignify the term by capitalizing the first letters! This is merely a hitch. A pause. A slight stutter in the flow of your creative expression.

This, too, shall pass.

But how?

Go read something. Go read something written by someone you’ve never heard of. Go read something that will make you say, “Damn, I feel like writing now!”

There...

Did it work..?

...




WHAT DO YOU FUCKING MEAN, “No”???

AWAKEN THE MUSE, MAN!!!


Gah..!


Okay, that’s it... you’re gonna use this to your advantage.

I’M your muse now!

Start writing something. What, do I look like a fucking contest prompt?! I don’t know what to write! Just do it! 

Yes, anything!

Y... yeah! Sure, write about this.

Woopty doo, you’re pissed cuz you can’t write, so you’re writing about it. What a winner.


Oh! And you’re writing it in the second person perspective-- what does this look like, a choose you’re own adventure book?!


Alright.  There.  Have you gotten it out of your system?  Are you ready to return to that project now? Think you can get back inside their heads and pull the rest of that interaction out of their throats?  You can do it.  I know you can!  Why..?

Well... because... um...

...




...What was I saying?