It's been awhile since I ranted, er, blogged, so what shall I write about?
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I have never understood what the eff the monolith was
until this moment. |
I know. Writer's block. I have a nice outline all planned out. I have characters prancing around in my head. I have witty dialogue and titillating scenes. Then when I sit down at the computer, I got nothing.
Nothing. The big, fat, whomping zero.
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| I have lots of assistance. |
Even when I've had an active case of insomnia, which does happen to me upon occasion and I happen to resemble a zombie (without makeup too!), I have been able to write.
So what do I do? I Google it. Because Bing and/or Google knows everything. They're like omniscient Internet gods. (I like the pictures on Bing but honestly I think the two are about the same otherwise.) (Today's picture on Bing was a swimming duckling. It was so cute I could have died. But I still am blocked.)
People have lots of tips on breaking the psychosomatic problematic issue of writer's block.
1. Write anything. Write about nothing. Write about your weird uncle who used to live down by the creek by the outhouse and ate nothing but kudzu and Moon Pies. Write about your big toe. (500 words on your big toe. Just try it.)
2. Read. Read. Read. Today I was reading a book and I had to stop because this was the sentence I came to. "She took hold of his big stalk and..." I'm sure you can imagine where that was going. It was obviously a romantically inclined scene with the Jolly Green Giant. I had no idea. So anyway, reading wasn't helping.
3. Change your environment. I put up black drapes and started playing The Mikado. Then I went outside and started weeding. I hate weeding. I couldn't find any unfinished novels out in the flower beds so I went back inside. So instead I decided to run outside and see if anyone noticed if I went streaking. Fortunately the police were not called. (Pity. I would have liked to see the inside of a Huntsville jail. I'm sure that would do something for writer's block.)
4. Research. My research usually falls to Googling (or Binging, which actually sounds kind of lewd) odd drinks to make. I found some new ones. This one topped the list. A Trickie Dickie Screwdriver, which I would think had something to do with Richard M. Nixon and/or Checkers. But in actually is one part Jack Daniels, two parts purple Kool Aid and a jigger of formaldehyde from the jar Hitler's brain is kept in. (That would be the hard part to obtain.) Then I found a recipe for infusing gummy bears with vodka, which we have tried before, but it didn't really work that well. (I would like to say that I did get smashed once from alcoholic gummies.)
5. Exercise. Do something else. Ask for help. I glommed these together because I thought it was about the same thing. We did go for a walk this morning and I tried to talk plot with HIM, the man to whom I'm married, but HIM immediately shut down. I'm pretty sure it's the same to him as it is to me when he starts talking about his job. "Rocket Science blah blah blah Missiles blah blah blah schematic arch of a trajectory blah blah blah." Except HIM hears "Plot blah blah blah writing blah blah blah poopy head."
Anyway, so I wrote a blog instead. Does this mean I don't have writer's block? I will see tomorrow.
3 comments:
Been there, suffered through.. finally picked up a #2 Ticonderoga and started writing out a scene on a steno pad...it cracked the dam. Looking forward to reading your next story, no matter what genre it's in.
Here is a method that seems to work for amazing number of writers, although I would prefer that they kept their writers block rather than do this. It is simply to take one of the earlier books in the series and copy whole sentences, even paragraphs or chapter and put it into their new novels with only slight changes.
I hope your writers block does not last long. I just finished Bubba and the Missing Woman. I am just starting Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note. I would hate to get all the way through the Bubba books and have to wait too long for the next book. I am trying to get my wife to read them so that I can hear her giggling as she reads them.
BTW, your strategy of offering the first book free worked for me. I downloaded it a few weeks ago, and I read it while on the ferry up here in Alaska. Needless to say, as soon as I got to a wifi hotspot I bought the next book. I am enjoying them quite a bit.
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