- Joined
- Jan 30, 2012
- Messages
- 198
- Reaction score
- 10
I'm trying to get back into writing, since I become terribly depressed when I'm not working, and I don't have enough projects that I feel like working on to fill up my entire day.
The problem is, I just can't write at all. It's even worse than it was before; it used to be I'd write a page, look at it, say "this is complete and utter garbage," and close the word processor. Now I can't even get that far- I get an idea and stare at the blank page for fifteen minutes, maybe write three lines of dialogue and throw that out. I just can't generate any kind of text.
I'm also seeing similar problems in the play-by-post role-playing games I GM; the descriptive quality of my postings, though they were never particularly evocative of the imagination, has plummeted into the realm of near non-existence. Where small paragraphs used to stand, now single sentences take their place.
Usually when I have this kind of problem, a complete inability to produce an acceptable result, it's usually because I'm missing some fundamental idea or truth that everyone around me simply neglected to mention; for music, it was the proper use of scales; for algebra, it was the order of operations. Of course, I'm still absolutely terrible at these things, just like I used to be at writing, but at least I could produce garbage. Now I can't produce anything.
The question here is, what do you folks, who have far more experience and training with writing than myself, think the problem is?
The problem is, I just can't write at all. It's even worse than it was before; it used to be I'd write a page, look at it, say "this is complete and utter garbage," and close the word processor. Now I can't even get that far- I get an idea and stare at the blank page for fifteen minutes, maybe write three lines of dialogue and throw that out. I just can't generate any kind of text.
I'm also seeing similar problems in the play-by-post role-playing games I GM; the descriptive quality of my postings, though they were never particularly evocative of the imagination, has plummeted into the realm of near non-existence. Where small paragraphs used to stand, now single sentences take their place.
Usually when I have this kind of problem, a complete inability to produce an acceptable result, it's usually because I'm missing some fundamental idea or truth that everyone around me simply neglected to mention; for music, it was the proper use of scales; for algebra, it was the order of operations. Of course, I'm still absolutely terrible at these things, just like I used to be at writing, but at least I could produce garbage. Now I can't produce anything.
The question here is, what do you folks, who have far more experience and training with writing than myself, think the problem is?