What if I have nothing to say? What if no one cares to read or, worse yet, hates the words before them?
If you have been writing for any length of time (say, five seconds or more!), then these are fears that creep up in your head at some point or another. How can we silence the nagging voice that begs us to stop, or not even try in the first place?
Start. Writing. Anything.
There is no better way to keep the harmful voices at bay than to drown them out. As the words flow from pen to paper or keyboard to screen, the seeds of doubt become more and more buried under the cacophony of the creative mind.
When you get lost in your characters, their dilemmas, the emotions that are charging them, and their world itself take the forefront in your head. They want to live, to speak. They don’t care about your doubts; those are not their problem. Their problem is their need to be heard — and you are their voice.
Let Your Characters Speak
As a writer, you have a pressing urge to let your characters tell their story. Nonetheless, there are times that their voices are mere whispers in your head, so quiet that you cannot discern what they want to say. Even worse is when they are taking a sabbatical, and you cannot hear them at all.
Those are the fated times when the ink isn’t flowing, the keyboard is quiet, and a full season of Orange is the New Black seems like a much better way to spend a day than pulling your hair out from lack of ideas.
It is times like these when our characters need a little nudging. We all get sleepy sometimes and need a little waking up, or get lost and need to be found. I hear you now - that’s great, but how can I set an alarm clock off in my head? Before you think I need to be carried off in a padded wagon because I think you should have a GPS on your characters, I have two words for you: writing prompts.
Exercise Your Brain
Writing is to the brain as exercise is to muscle. Moreover, like exercise, the more you do it, the easier it gets. The key is to keep it fresh and get it down.
I have found that randomly picking story ideas, setting a timer and typing anything that comes to mind is the best way to break through for me. Is it perfect? No! Then again, first drafts are not meant to be absolute.
You will not always have something salvageable from these sessions, either; that is okay. The point is not to write something you can sell. All you want from these speed sessions is to get words down no matter what.
Of course, you may end up with a gem on your hands that you can polish and send off to your favorite editor; you never know. Rest assured that even if that does not happen, you have still done something amazing.
You broke through the doubt and WROTE!
Finding Inspiration to Break Through Writer's Block
Let’s make one thing clear - if you write, then you are a writer. You can get through the frightening times where you think you have nothing to say in much the same way as you break through writer’s block. The cool thing about breaking through self-imposed blocks in this manner is that you can find inspiration anywhere:
- Look up a random Wikipedia page and write about it. You can do this with the following link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
- Same thing goes for a random video play YouTube Roulette! http://ytroulette.com
- Go outside. Look at those squirrels running around like crazy. What are they saying to each other?
- Pick the first stranger you see outside of your house today and start writing their memoir.
- Write about your best memory from childhood.
- What’s your favorite television show? Write a scene for it.
- Re-write a cherished scene from a novel as fan fiction.
- Last but not least, if nothing is begging you for attention, Google “writing prompts” and you will get plenty of literal ones.
Be Inspired Through Other Steemians
See things from a different perspective. Sometimes all it takes is a change of thinking, as @happycrazycon found out recently in Perspectives - Where We See Things From
Find an image that speaks to you, and write about it. This is one of my favorite things to do, and I found one from @viking-ventures in Fall Leaves Clock Tower Reprised
Do something you normally wouldn't do, then write about it, like what @remouherek did in What I Learned From Living on the Street for Five Days
Join a contest! There are tons of them on Steemit. (Believe me, I have GINAbot set to notify me of them! 😲) You can see the latest ones here: https://steemit.com/created/contest
See how truly infinite the possibilities are? Now follow those little birdies and get to being a writer, once and for all!
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very nice post @ambrosial! I really like it and think you cover a topic that we all have. Sometimes we think we are alone, but really almost everyone has similar experiences with writing!
As a follower of @followforupvotes this post has been randomly selected and upvoted! Enjoy your upvote and have a great day!
Sweet! Thank you. 😎
Thanks for the shout-out. Glad you enjoy my pictures!
You are very welcome and I am looking forward to more of them!
This post proves to be a worthy post for the #greetersguild initiative, bringing knowledge, people, and resources together for new users to succeed on the steemit blockchain. Support @terminallyill the visionary behind this cause and whom summoned me to upvote your post.
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@ambrosial you were flagged by a worthless gang of trolls, so, I gave you an upvote to counteract it! Enjoy!!
@abusereports thank you so much. I've been away for a couple months and just saw the downvotes on steemd.com and popped over to see what in the world was going on. I appreciate your support!
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