writers block? not always an issue

x2. When I can't complete an idea from start to finish I put it aside. I have journals that are ten years old with ideas I've just recently returned to. I'm glad I didn't chuck those ideas, because they're finally becoming relevant!

That's nothing to do with writer's block.

Worry about other folk's tossed aside ideas if you must but all you are doing is drumming up competition for yourself.

It's not a concept - it's commonsense but ideas are ten-a penny and worthless without being turned into writing.

Some folk like the idea of coming up with ideas that go nowhere.

It's called being in love with the idea of being a writer.

And Welcome.

Bufty said:

It's not a concept - it's commonsense but ideas are ten-a penny and worthless without being turned into writing.

Some folk like the idea of coming up with ideas that go nowhere.

It's called being in love with the idea of being a writer.

Click to expand...

Well said.

It's not writer's block, it's "don't wanna do the work."

Your desire to help others is commendable but sifting away an endless stream of ideas helps nobody to concentrate upon writing tales based upon an idea.

Are you saying that eventually the party concerned may realise that two or three of those ideas might possibly go together to make up a story?

It only takes one idea to start a tale. The most important thing is the desire to actually start writing.

pylot said:

what i worry about though is the thousands of writers who come up with a million-and-one ideas, then give up because nothing works together. this shouldn't be happening (the giving up).

Click to expand...

Perhaps it should be. People don't need to follow through with something they don't want to do.

pylot said:

what i worry about though is the thousands of writers who come up with a million-and-one ideas, then give up because nothing works together. this shouldn't be happening (the giving up).

Click to expand...

People who don't take the time to learn the craft and develop the discipline aren't writers, they're wannabes. I don't need the extra competition from people who want to be writers but won't pay their dues. Functioning writers are already producing more than enough good fiction to keep the literary machine running.

Is that what you meant?

Dangerousbill - I love that you said "functioning writers." Hahaha.

You might want to find something else to worry about.

That's my problem, I think. I have all these ideas, but I feel so lost about how to structure them into a coherent storyline.

Bufty said:

Some folk like the idea of coming up with ideas that go nowhere.
It's called being in love with the idea of being a writer.

Click to expand...

Perhaps, but for every such person, there is someone who hates coming up with ideas that are hard to follow through with and is trying to figure out how to find viable ideas for writing.

thethinker42 said:

It's not writer's block, it's "don't wanna do the work."

Click to expand...

Just wondering how you know that.

Bufty said:

It only takes one idea to start a tale. The most important thing is the desire to actually start writing.

Click to expand...

The idea has to be a viable story idea. One can write, hundreds of words a day, five or six days a week, and fail to write a story.

This thread has me wondering why it's ok to be dismissive about the difficulty some people have when they try to act on their creative impulses. I'm wondering why it's ok to make declarations about what's going on in the mind's of other people (especially when such declarations are stated as fact, rather than opinion, and are dismissive and belittling.)

contrariwise said:

That's my problem, I think. I have all these ideas, but I feel so lost about how to structure them into a coherent storyline.

Click to expand...

That's pretty much where I was when I first started. I'd advise a couple of things. It helped me a lot to try writing stories not as "I'm inspired and I want to write this story that is in my heart" (those stories are still there, waiting for the day when my skillz are sufficient) - but rather to just write stories, each one as an exercise.

The most important thing is to learn how to finish, so I'd recommend writing some stories the only goal being to make sure each one has a beginning, middle and end. Dumb is ok, you can keep these efforts entirely to yourself, and anyway, they are just exercises, right?

In order to be able to actually write a story, I read a lot of short stories and rewrote them essentially as outlines. I looked for similar elements across the stories, and then used those as a basis for 'assigning' myself an exercise, something like, "write a story about a person who ..."

Some people seem to know without thinking how stories work. For whatever reason, this part seems to be tricky for others. My take on it is you want to write for a reason, and for whatever other reason(s) your output is likely to be less direct (for want of a better way of expressing it) than it is for others.

Keep at it
LN

Layla Nahar said:

Some people seem to know without thinking how stories work. For whatever reason, this part seems to be tricky for others.

Click to expand...

I'm in that second group. I have ideas, always have ideas. At the beginning, I had no idea how to follow through because some basic things that many writers already know in one form or another, I really didn't.

But in my desire to get them written down, I learned. I pushed up my sleeves, got books, got myself on this board, wrote and set aside things that were abysmal and kept writing. Hopefully, kept improving.

If it's wanted bad enough, they'll do the work and learn. It's not like the internet has a dearth of information.

There's nothing belittling or dismissive about saying that in order to learn how to write one has to start writing.

Staring at a blank page all day and/or darting from one idea to the next achieves nothing.

Not being able to come up with a viable idea is a different scenario but once again if one doesn't start putting words on paper one will never learn.

Seems to me that acting on a creative impulse - presumably an idea - means translating it into words on paper. One can either start writing the tale or start writing an outline but writing is the important element.

Layla Nahar said:

Perhaps, but for every such person, there is someone who hates coming up with ideas that are hard to follow through with and is trying to figure out how to find viable ideas for writing.


Just wondering how you know that.



The idea has to be a viable story idea. One can write, hundreds of words a day, five or six days a week, and fail to write a story.

This thread has me wondering why it's ok to be dismissive about the difficulty some people have when they try to act on their creative impulses. I'm wondering why it's ok to make declarations about what's going on in the mind's of other people (especially when such declarations are stated as fact, rather than opinion, and are dismissive and belittling.)

Click to expand...

Bufty said:

That's nothing to do with writer's block.

Worry about other folk's tossed aside ideas if you must but all you are doing is drumming up competition for yourself.

It's not a concept - it's commonsense but ideas are ten-a penny and worthless without being turned into writing.

Some folk like the idea of coming up with ideas that go nowhere.

It's called being in love with the idea of being a writer.

And Welcome.

Click to expand...

Yes, yes, YES!

I have often seen (on this forum and others) where a poster will give a list of ideas, then ask which one of these would you do? Or is most workable? Or is most interesting? Etc.

Or, they post a synopsis of a story - sometimes a looooong and hard-to-read and confusing synopsis - and ask for critique on the synopsis, with, whadya think, fellow writers? Do you see plot loopholes? Should I add/delete characters? Whadya think of my plot overall?

I go nuts with these posts and usually ignore them, but sometimes I do respond with: WRITE, first. Write something, anything, part of it, all of it, the last chapter, a middle chapter, something, anything.

Some people are simply in love with ideas and will conjure them up ad infinitum (ad nauseum?) but seldom put those ideas into a coherent tale, story, novel or screenplay.

To be a writer, one must write.

Layla Nahar said:

In order to be able to actually write a story, I read a lot of short stories and rewrote them essentially as outlines. I looked for similar elements across the stories, and then used those as a basis for 'assigning' myself an exercise, something like, "write a story about a person who ..."

Click to expand...

That is a great idea. I guess that's how you learn anything else. You learn to draw by copying pictures. Then when you can copy them well, you're ready to draw pictures of your own. It hadn't occurred to me that you can learn to write in the exact same way.

Bufty said:

There's nothing belittling or dismissive about saying that in order to learn how to write one has to start writing.

Click to expand...

I agree. But you said something different.

There are many people with very strong desires to do something creative - play guitar, paint a picture, etc but for whom acting upon those desires is difficult because of conflicting ideas and difficult feelings. It does them little help when people say things that would reinforce the idea that they are, say, fake, or shouldn't be doing this etc. That was my problem with the tone of your post and another. I saw this as diminishing the kind of things some people struggle with. I see this kind of idea expressed from time to time and it grates. Made me want to put in my 2c.