Oh no, you!

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 3rd, 2024

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  • First of all, I want to make sure we have the same definition of writers block:

    Inability to write because,

    • Don’t know how to start
    • Don’t know how to continue something already started
    • Lack of motivation

    I’ve found that something that works is to force a start. Pick a word, any word, write it, and then figure out a sentence. The sentence may not connect to anything, but that’s not important. Try to expand the sentence into a paragraph. Then a scene. I find that scene building is a great way to get started, even if the scene itself is of questionable usefulness or quality.

    Don’t sorry of it’s poorly written. Embrace the potential for cringe. The important part is that you’re writing. Think of it like warmup similar to the physical equivalents athletes do beforehand.

    How long to do this is all up to you. It may distract you from what you originally intended to write and become its own thing, or it might accidentally fit reasonably well with some unfinished work you have already saved. Either way, once you feel that creativity is properly flowing again, you can try to transition into writing what you intended to. You you can let the warmup-writeup become its own project (one of my better stories started as a warmup), or otherwise decide later what you’re gonna use it for (if anything).

    It’s hard to force motivation, but the above will at least (hopefully) get you into the right headspace.

    And then you write the rest of the owl.


  • In 2008, I was fed up with a combination of wage slavery and freelancing, so I started looking around for a proper career. I found a job posting on monster.com for something called “seismic survey technician”. I was severely underqualified and I had no idea what it was, but it involved computery stuff with and emphasis on Linux and other unix systems, in addition to international travel which sounded interesting, so I sent in my application out of curiosity.

    I ended up getting the job, turns out dicking around with Slackware and FreeBSD for 10 years was actually useful. Over the years since then I’ve carved out a pretty comfy niche in the industry.