Warning: Don’t feed the writer’s block

Warning: Don’t feed the writer’s block

I’m not the type of person that can sit down at a computer and hammer out a real gem of a post in one session. I’m very much the type of person that sits down at a computer and stares bewilderingly at the blinking cursor mocking my lack of typing. And sometimes I’ll be working on a project when I suddenly careen to a stop and can’t muster up the motivation to finish whatever it is I’m working on.

Yes, I’m talking about writer’s block.

It’s annoyingly hard for me to fight something that doesn’t have a face to it or isn’t actually tangible. So what I ended up doing to get around this little problem was to literally create a writer’s block…with a face. I also went ahead and personified it with a torpor outlook on life. I am all about random acts of personification.

Somewhere deep inside that grape exoskeleton is the inspiration needed to start or finish your piece, but, unfortunately, the writer’s block does not acquiesce to your whims or demands. It simply sits between you and the final product without so much as blinking…or…erm, doing anything, really.

Anyway, I have a quite a few ideas scribbled in a bunch of little notebooks around my apartment. Usually, I’ll flip through them and a little sketch or phrase will inspire me to translate it into something bigger. That’s how a majority of the content on this site is born. But even though I have the inspiration to finish one of those ideas, I can usually expect the writer’s block to manifest. Actually, I realize that my writer’s block is pretty much always around to some extent. Sometimes I genuinely can’t think of something, but typically the writer’s block is more of a Negative Nancy constantly telling me that whatever I’m working on isn’t good enough and never will be. Anyway, not wanting to stop working in fear of losing the gist of the idea, I’ll try and muscle through it to get to the finish. And I’ll attempt this through an array of different methods.

1. Pleading

2. Threats

3. Reverse Psychology

4. Humor

5. Magic

6. Pokemon

7. Power-ups

Eventually, I find the only thing I can do, is to say, “Eff it” and walk away.

I’ve realized, for me in particular, that the writer’s block is most prevalent when I’m depleting all of my creativity and humor deposits at an irregular rate. Another way of putting it would be to say that the content is all moving in one direction, away from me. I’ve figured out that I need a constant stream of inspiration to be able to put together something I think is really good and worthy of sharing. There’s an optimal range of creating and consuming I like to stay within. I accomplish the “consuming” part by walking away from my current project so that I can do laps around the internet or I’ll leave the apartment and exercise a little spontaneity. And when I feel recharged and fresh I come back and usually find that I can tune out my writer’s block just long enough to finish something and post it.

And that’s how I’ve learned to live with my writer’s block.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Comics, Entertainment, Humor, Illustrated, Webcomics, Writing