Yesterday, i didn’t go into the office at all, but instead stayed home and spent the day working on More than Two, the book on polyamory I’m writing. An entire afternoon of sitting and staring at a blinking cursor, and I end up with three pages to show for it. I’m up to fifty pages total so far; at this rate, it’s going to take another year to finish this draft!
I actually have an editor now, who is not (bless her heart) pestering me for material in the slightest, but still. I can’t figure out why it’s turning into such a struggle. I write every day, on LiveJournal and newsgroups and mailing lists and whatnot; hell, i can sit down to respond to something in a newsgroup and end up writing two thousand words without even blinking. But a book? Every word is an ordeal. And it’s ot like I don’t know what to say; I know exactly what I want to say. It’s just proving to be remarkably difficult to say it.
And this morning, while I was stepping out of the shower, the cat caught and ate a bug. Eww!
Yes, I have the same issue. I think it’s easy to write copiously on LJ because you have lower expectations for how it turns out, and you’re frozen by your inner critic when you sit down to do “serious” writing.
Do you know about free-writing? That can loosen you up.
Also, one way I “trick” myself into being productive is to write somewhere casually (on LJ or another casual on-line venue) on the same topics I’m trying to write “seriously” about. That will give me a rough draft, and then I can cut and paste it into the “serious” writing and neaten it up, re-arrange it, etc.
Best of luck to you.
Yes, I have the same issue. I think it’s easy to write copiously on LJ because you have lower expectations for how it turns out, and you’re frozen by your inner critic when you sit down to do “serious” writing.
Do you know about free-writing? That can loosen you up.
Also, one way I “trick” myself into being productive is to write somewhere casually (on LJ or another casual on-line venue) on the same topics I’m trying to write “seriously” about. That will give me a rough draft, and then I can cut and paste it into the “serious” writing and neaten it up, re-arrange it, etc.
Best of luck to you.
When you are sitting down to write, it takes time and focus. Sometimes you have to shut everything out. Othertimes, background noises can help.
When you are sitting down to write, it takes time and focus. Sometimes you have to shut everything out. Othertimes, background noises can help.
I have the same problem on LiveJournal, sometimes. I would guess that any material that you expect others to eventually read and judge will be hard to get out, because awareness of that audience means the internal censor will be fully engaged. I find it definitely is hardest to write to a blank page, because I want to write it perfectly the first time — whereas editing is comparatively easy, I can see when something is wrong or incomplete and go straight to fixing it. So perhaps you could brainstorm an outline and try to flesh out a skeleton for the overall piece, whenever you have slow moments, rather than trying to write it from the beginning on? I mean, eventually you will have to write a draft in start-to-finish order, but if you have a thread to guide you it may go more smoothly.
On the other hand, in my experience and from what I have read, there will be times when you get to passages that just don’t want to come out. It will require wrestling to work through, even though other passages may fly out of your fingers. So I wouldn’t be too hard on myself about difficult parts.
Another thing to try is to make sure that your schedule is clear for the entire rest of the day, including the evening. It might be hard to get into the right level of concentration when you know it’s going to be broken at time X in the near future.
I have the same problem on LiveJournal, sometimes. I would guess that any material that you expect others to eventually read and judge will be hard to get out, because awareness of that audience means the internal censor will be fully engaged. I find it definitely is hardest to write to a blank page, because I want to write it perfectly the first time — whereas editing is comparatively easy, I can see when something is wrong or incomplete and go straight to fixing it. So perhaps you could brainstorm an outline and try to flesh out a skeleton for the overall piece, whenever you have slow moments, rather than trying to write it from the beginning on? I mean, eventually you will have to write a draft in start-to-finish order, but if you have a thread to guide you it may go more smoothly.
On the other hand, in my experience and from what I have read, there will be times when you get to passages that just don’t want to come out. It will require wrestling to work through, even though other passages may fly out of your fingers. So I wouldn’t be too hard on myself about difficult parts.
Another thing to try is to make sure that your schedule is clear for the entire rest of the day, including the evening. It might be hard to get into the right level of concentration when you know it’s going to be broken at time X in the near future.