McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Burn out?
BobForPresident:
--- Quote from: belial.1980 on September 26, 2009, 08:40:50 PM ---Plain and simple: I'm feeling burned out.
It's like the creative spark in my brain just died. I really do want to become a successful writer someday. I average about 3 hours a day writing. (More on the weekends) But something happened this week. I've barely been able to crank out a page a day and when I write it feels like pulling teeth.
I'm near the end of the "swampy middle" of my first draft manuscript. I'm starting to write the scene that sets up the climax and ending. But when I sit down and try to write I just hear an empty echo in my head. I'd thought about writing a short story to take my mind off it for a bit but I've set a personal deadline to finish this manuscript and don't want to get distracted from it. Even worse--no other story ideas I've got floating around seem inspiring to me.
This last week had been a real pain and I think stress levels and personal frustration from my job probably have a large part to do with it. ::Hopefully:: this is just a funk that'll pass in a few days. Anybody else ever get this way? Any suggestions for how to deal with it? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
--- End quote ---
My advice - don't write. Read more. Go to movies. Go see plays. Find entertainment sources that flirt with (but don't match) your genre.
Doing this really tends to get my brain moving and augment my characters and plotlines with ideas unusual to my genre. For example, absorbing Paul S Kemp's stuff has sort of inspired me to make the characters grittier and more 3-dimensional, and studying up on European history and crime has shaken things up in my writing as well.
One more thing - if you must write, write something else. A vignette, poetry (just don't get too purple), music. It moves the mind toward creativity.
meg_evonne:
--- Quote from: belial.1980 on October 01, 2009, 05:26:14 AM ---...I think it ended up being some of the best stuff I've written to date. That's when I made the switch from telling the story in 1st person POV and used 3rd, so I could show things happening outside the MC's viewpoint.
I know Jim and other authors recommend 1st person POV for beginning writers but I've since learned that I'm more comfortable writing in the 3rd. Wierd.
--- End quote ---
I also fall into the catagory that finds 1st POV easier. I think because my stories come from my characters, in my case.
At writer's workshops with 'real' writers (not hobby duffs like me) though, they have a huge marked preference for 3rd in all it's various forms. There were editors at houses that said, "never send me a 1st". I take that as a bit of snobbery and filed it as unimportant. I'm not writing Tolstoy.
As to putting it away for awhile. I have mixed feelings on that. Sometimes it's easy for a hobby writer to put it off, but I'd like to think that I can force my way through it like a serious writer who is trying to meet a deadline. They can't put it off or disaster will strike.
I don't expect to even be published, but I'd like to know that I do have the, uhm balls? Huffpa(sp)? to do it if it worked out that I could sit in front of the keyboard when I really don't have a clue as to what is going wrong and sticking it out. The idea fulfills some competitive need in me.
Finally, it also bothers me because I hear so many writers say they have a ton of books started, but only a rare one gets through to the end of the rough draft, or the 2nd, or--you get my drift.
Glad you worked your way through it belial! Push forward!
Starbeam:
Also with the 1st vs 3rd POV, a lot of it can depend on the story. I started writing with 3rd person, and then when I started my bigger fantasy story, I started in 1st. Which was quick and easy, and different, but when I workshopped it for a class, the one good suggestion I got was to switch to 3rd. Did that, and got a ton of new stuff, partly from getting the POV of other characters. Plus it's in the swords and sorcery style of fantasy, so my 1st person style really didn't work well. I tend to write first like I think, so it would look a lot like this paragraph. Lots of fragments and such. But it works great for the urban fantasy I've been working on.
Philliph:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on October 01, 2009, 10:34:12 PM ---I also fall into the catagory that finds 1st POV easier. I think because my stories come from my characters, in my case.
At writer's workshops with 'real' writers (not hobby duffs like me) though, they have a huge marked preference for 3rd in all it's various forms. There were editors at houses that said, "never send me a 1st". I take that as a bit of snobbery and filed it as unimportant. I'm not writing Tolstoy.
--- End quote ---
Whoah whoah whoah whoah!
Hold up!
Never send me a 1st. i haven't even gotten past that before my world went concave. thats ridiculous. i write in first. i hope editors don't really mind 1st...I'll continue reading what you wrote.
Reading.
Hmm. now theres some advice i never see. most books started never get finished. I suppose i'll have to oppose this law of writers.
Heheheheheee, motorvation.
I also give kudos to Belial. as a newly starting writer I have only experienced this burn once. it lasted my whole summer break(i'm still in highschool :-\). all of that free time wasted in front of a computer screen destroying my eyesight in an "I'm not gonna blink until i can push out a page" type of staredown with a monitor. Then, once the stress of the oncoming school year crushed me it came back. at the exact time when i'm not motivated to write, just sleep and hope i wake up as a fish or something. If only i had know about the "Outline Your Chapters" trick. i started that at the beginning of school and it has helped me bulldoze over the beginning signs of writers block. Well, i hope this (auto)biography gave you any insight into the ignorantly oblivious(Does that even work??) teenager.
Back to my point. Congrats to anybody that defeated this plague. just remember, you are a crystal hammer and the block is a brick wall. you'll get through it...eventually.
BobForPresident:
--- Quote from: Philliph on October 02, 2009, 12:46:48 AM ---
Hmm. now theres some advice i never see. most books started never get finished. I suppose i'll have to oppose this law of writers.
Heheheheheee, motorvation.
--- End quote ---
For what it's worth, Salvatore would disagree with me. He claims he doesn't really read anymore, as it tends to affect his style. Whoa.
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