So, this will be something that the majority of people will have experienced. That feeling of looking at a blank piece of paper or an empty screen with the cursor ticking away, heavily anticipating your commands but nothing comes. You try some words, delete it. Start over. Walk away thinking you are not quite in the zone. The reason I say most people have experienced this is because of school, course work. I would assume 99% of people have had to write something based on a subject and been left to their own devices, I always had problems with English coursework. For whatever reason, I could never quite get my head around it but luckily my teacher was amazing and helped me redraft far too many times.
I can't imagine having this feeling if writing was my lively hood, for full time bloggers, authors, script writers.. Just anything where you are getting paid to be creative. Now, they usually have teams of people who can help with ideas but what if you are on your own? That is the purpose of this post, to share my experience and share ideas which you might find come in handy one day.
Know what you want to set out to do
I know I have this problem quite a lot. It is quite easy to just babble on randomly about things, which for me, does work sometimes as this blog is like a live mental mind map. If you are setting out to achieve something, like writing an informative piece then choose something. Something that you know will keep you interested. I know that sometimes you are given set pieces to work on but there is always a way to engage yourself in it. An example of this, in my short time at university, I was given mercury as a subject to talk about. Now, I didn't really know what to do with it, so I thought about things I liked. Environmental science and science itself so I moved it in the direction of how this affects the environment and why. I therefore enjoyed researching it more, writing it and got a pretty good grade.
Just write something and mind mapping
Anything. This is also a lot easier to do when word processing because you can easily come back and get rid of it later. If hand writing, put your subject in the middle and just write things that come to mind first. Even if they seem irrelevant. These simple prompts can help cascade ideas through your fingers and onto your work medium. Setting these things out in a mind map also really helps, it is a different more visual way of looking at what you want to talk about and helps you to group ideas together. Use colour, pictures, anything that turns switches on in your mind. Something that really worked for me was having a whiteboard that I could write onto. You can move your ideas around much easier, you are free to do what you want with it and you can leave it up whilst you get going if it helped.
Stop
People may disagree with my on this one but.. Just stop. I always got really frustrated sitting there not being able to do anything or get any ideas and ended up working myself up about it. I learned to just get up and walk away. Leave it where it is, talk to someone, chill out for a while, have a snack. Then come back to it, a fresh look can really change your perspective on things.
Use your resources!
If you haven't noticed - this is the 21st century. You have all the worlds knowledge basically sitting in front of you. The internet is not just a large directory of funny cat pictures. Search your subject, find other peoples work to get more ideas. If it is on the internet and you can view it without having to pay or dig deep to find it then it is generally put there to help. Of course, don't steal, give credit to people where it is due. If someone came to my page and felt something was particularly useful to them, I would be more than happy for them to use it. Because I've been there. Also, libraries. They are actually there for a reason.
All the stuff I have included above has come from personal experience and advice from friends. Of course, there is a load of other stuff on the internet, probably better researched than a 21 year old sitting on a bed! Here are some pages which I think you might also find useful:
http://io9.com/5844988/the-10-types-of-writers-block-and-how-to-overcome-them
http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/tips/writersblock/
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/block-quotes-advice-great-writers-kicking-writers-block-85314/
Day 505
Lets have a picture in here shall we?
21 and 22 Jump Street, both respectively great films. I was quite worried about the sequel because the first was really good, and there is always that niggling that the second film won't be as good. It is just there to set out to make some money whilst the idea is still fresh in peoples minds. This was not one of those cases and I was so happy about that. Apparently there are plans or currently is currently in process, a third film. Once again, the same worry comes to but I don't think they would do it if they didn't think they could pull it off again. We will just have to wait and see.
Right now? I think I will maybe watch some SAO.. Might play some Knights of Pen and Paper. Money is so hard to come by in that game. Blog you later peeps.
No comments:
Post a Comment