Writer’s block be damned, yea, be much damned!
It got me sitting clueless all day but at the end, I had to confront it by writing about it. The experience can be so humiliating and frustrating – gut wrenching is a more appropriate phrase.
Have you ever wanted to do something, so bad, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to it, when you couldn’t stop asking, ” What is wrong with me?” Yea, that’s the feeling of writer’s block.
Its the equivalent of white paper syndrome for artists and blank page syndrome for students or professionals – where you get to stare into a piece of paper, stranded and not knowing what to draw or write. It can be so daunting.
Sometimes, being a creative ain’t no merry, especially when you you have to strive for quality content.
You have to fish through a huge sea of ideas, looking for the most rewarding gamefish of all – the likes of the swordfish.
Woe is unto you if you keep pulling out tilapias. They’re worth no good prize for a game fisher. We go out looking for the big fish, for trophies.
A trophy is one you can hold with both arms and feel the weight of your success. How do you even begin to hold a little tilapia? It’s a mockery!
That’s why its frustrating to go through the experience.
Your brain just refuses to let through anything it perceives as mediocre. Then you have to go back to the so called drawing board and figure out some other idea.
The funny thing is that some of these mediocre ideas the brain pushes away are the same ideas you had written down a few days ago, thinking they would hold up to your standard.
So, here are some tips I gathered for myself, but they could help anyone else in the creative world:
- I am learning that keeping an idea for later use doesn’t work out well for me. If I have some idea, I have to get down with it, right then.
- If I have to keep an idea file, then I have to make it a little bit detailed. For every idea, there has to be a breakdown of the sections of the story. That way, I will value the story more, knowing how it will unfold.
- The most powerful, by my experience is looking back to my previous articles. It has a way of cheering me up when I’m down at my lowest. It reminds me just how capable I can be. It’s like looking at your trophies, it wakes up the giant asleep inside of you.
Number 3 is how I got off the hook with today’s episode of writer’s block. I hope it’s going to work next time. If it doesn’t, I will figure out another way and let you know!
Meanwhile, the comment section doesn’t bite. Please leave a comment, or a like.