Forcing yourself to write

N

NoTalentAssClown

Member
Do you think it's good to force yourself to write? Sometimes I am just not in the mood, but that can last a long time, so I sit down and force myself to do it. I'm sure every writer knows what I'm talking about. I love writing and it's all I want to do in life, but sometimes it's the last thing I want to do.

When I'm "in the mood" or "in the zone", I feel like a man possessed: my ideas are flowing and I don't even have to think, my fingers just type away. I even wrote a 110 page feature in one night! However...

When I crash, I crash HARD. My writer's block seems permanent and I just want to give up on the screenplay (which I have done several times).

What's your opinion? Any little tricks that you do? Any tips? Strange exercises?
 
If you wan to be a writer, you absolutely have to force yourself to write. That's called discipline. Somerset Maugham wrote every single day of the year from 9AM to 1PM.
 
A trick I have used to overcome writers block is to first identify my current methods
of inspiration and then alter those methods. It has worked for me in the past.
 
i agree with everyone, you have to force yourself to write. if you want to be a professional, then you have to do it consistently, not just when inspiration strikes. it helps for me to have milestones and set hard dates, like outline, rough draft, etc. i also have a writing group i meet wtih once a month. i think it really helps to know someone is expecting to read your work on a certain date. if i get really stuck, i just start another project and go back to the first one at a later date.
 
I'm pretty prolific without forcing myself ever. I just finished a three character stage play (eighty pages) and I didn't need to force myself during that period. I understand everybody has different struggles but to me it's almost like saying "I'm forcing myself to have sex with this beautiful woman who wants to be with me." Now if you've got some dogsh%%t assignment for pay, okay, I can understand that, but your own material you're passionate about is a little hard to understand. If it's a real problem you might want to examine your reasons for writing. Good luck to everybody on their writing.
 
I write every day. I don't have to force myself to do it any more. I just incorporated a couple hours of writing after work each night in to part of my daily routine. After a week or two, it just becomes automatic. The problem I run in to from time to time is that I'll be stumped for an idea (even though the desire to write is there.) When that happens, I work on a different script than the one I had intended. I find it usually helps get my creative juices flowing and after an hour or so on that other script, I can usually get back to the first one and break through whichever barrier was blocking my progress.
 
I find researching, outlining, and sequencing to be fairly low stress, not much motivation required-- and the way the pros do it (so I have been told) is a ration of 3:2 or 3:1 outlining:screenwriting, whereas beginners do closer to a 1:3 ratio; spend lots of time structuring it up front and then scene writing comes fast. With my current screenplay I find it helps to move around in the story writing scenes at various places depending on my mood-- if I have lots of motivation it is easier to write relatively boring Act One setup scenes, if I am having a hard day getting motivated to write I jump to a scene that interests me, is easier to crank out. And give myself permission to write junk, and write completely OTN dialog because that is what should be in the first (vomit) draft so I know the characters' intentions and feelings, then on a rewrite I can change the dialog using many excellent techniques I learned from Karl Iglesias. If I give myself a goal of (for the sake of discussion) 1 page a day, and stop at 1.5 pages, it makes the next day's quota so much easier to attain I have more motivation to write the next day. Inevitably I write far more, but setting a low bar makes the journey seem short, the day's tasks doable. That first (vomit) draft must be written with permission to write crap, write OTN, just get the damn story down on paper start to finish. There will be time for tweaking after that-- a pass through for dialog, a pass through for char arc, a pass through for scene goals and conflict, a pass through for visuals, and so on.
 
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Lots of good comments. But, yeah, force yourself to do "something" on a script. I do resort to lots of notes and outlining when I'm not "feeling it" but it makes me more productive when I do get to writing the actual scripts.

I often rewrite old stuff when I'm not particularly inspired to write proper. I find that there's always a better way to write even that precious 1st Script that you loved so much at the time but made others wince in pain....by getting into a groove with something that's easily done (and to be sure revising early scripts of mine is way easy as there's so many glaring issues with the writing) will exercise the muscle enough to get you out of a writers block quicker than if you just try to force yourself through it cold.

-M
 
I've tried outlining a few different times and have never found it to be very useful for my style of writing. I like to sit at a blank page and let the ideas flow without having to worry about sticking to predetermined plot points. I've gotten on rolls where 30-40 pages will just flow from my head to the page in a matter of hours. That wouldn't happen if I was trying to stick to an outline. Once my creative juices start flowing, I try not to impede them at all and just let the script write itself. Then once I have a first draft, I go back through and worry about the other stuff in rewrites... Plot points, act breaks, character arcs, character voices, etc...

I'm not sure what the point of my post is other than to just offer another way of doing things to the conversation. What works for me wouldn't work for everyone just like what works for Randall isn't what works for me. Through trial and error, I think everyone eventually develops their own system over the course of time.
 
I've never had a period of "writer's block". In my early efforts, I sometimes had trouble finding the right words or difficulty structuring a sentence, but that got easier the more I did it. Writing isn't really a "struggle" for me anymore. There are periods where I don't write, but that's because I don't have anything to write. I think it's important to have non-productive periods where you fill up the gas tank and just go about life -- read, travel, etc. Then you'll have a lot more stuff to put into your writing when you get back in the saddle.
 
It's funny to me when someone says they go to notes and outlining when they can't write. For me, that's the really easy part (writing) -- writing is like curb stomping a locust in Gears of War 2 after he's already on the ground. That's the SUPER easy part. The tough part is the outlining, coming up with the script and what each scene is about. Once I have an outline done, in my mind, I actually already finished that script. It's like a formality. Because writing it out from a 10 page outline is a cake-walk, I've literally done it in one day before, 22.5 hours of writing. Then it's a matter of polishing it, which is also easy it's just a long process of 10-15 drafts.

But the outlining... boy, that's tough. First, it takes me a long time to come up with an idea I even like, and when I come up with the idea, then I wonder to myself if that idea is enough to sustain a 90 minute film. Then from there I come up with some of the major plot points, and that's usually not TOO tough, it's difficult but it's doable. Filling in all of the gaps and really writing a meaty paragraph about every scene, figuring out who the characters are, etc., that's TOUGH work. I can spend an hour pacing my condo to come up with a single scene. And then sometimes that scene won't work days later when I change my mind. So that's why I say when I have the outline pounded out, the rest just flows naturally like an avalanche down hill.
 
For years I was told that a writer had to write everyday.

A writer had to rewrite a script everyday.

BULL-HOCKEY!

I think you can get stagnate yes, if you don't "practice" but that's like asking a pianist to practice every single day or a chess player to play every single day. It's called burn-out.

Write in moderation. Research constantly. Jot down notes on index cards, outlines, titles for scripts, etc.

But to write a script every single day - BULL-HOCKEY!
 
Yes, forcing yourself to write everyday is good practice. This is done because everything else will take your attention when you don't. I know this is happening to me now. Forcing myself not only to write but think critically about the story helped tremendously. I had to force myself to think about the story. To go back and change some things based on the kind of story it was. As there was no way that I could do it the way I had planned. It was like painting by the numbers then I realised that I wasn't specifically doing a paint by the numbers story. I had to fix the ending which is where the big problems come. Especially considering my ending was a beginning. I find the more I write the easier it is. When I'm not writing, writing actually becomes harder. It's crazy.

-Nate
 
I agree that getting the basic premise and the outline down is the hardest part. It seems like in any creative endeavor turning absolutely nothing into something is much more difficult than turning something into something else. Thus, the earlier stages are the most difficult.

On the subject of writer's block, William Gibson (famous science fiction novelist) had this to say:

A "Creator's block" sounds like something afflicting a divinity, but writer's block is my default setting. Its opposite is miraculous. The process of learning to write fiction, for me, was one of learning to almost continually be doing it *through* the block, in spite of the block, the block becoming the accustomed place from which to work. Our traditional cultural models of creativity tend to involve the wrong sort of heroism, for me. "It sprang whole and perfect from my brow" as opposed to "I saw it mispelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me". I was much encouraged, when I began to write, by Manny Farber's idea of "termite art".
Click to expand...

via http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/11/william-gibson-answe.html
 
I've never seen a point to talking about writer's block yet, ever.

An artist's life is taking in, regurgitating, and putting back out into the world.

If you're not putting anything out, take some more in. End of problem.
 
For me, writing is very much like going to the gym. I hate GOING to the gym, but I love BEING AT the gym. It's kind of hard to explain, but it's like I will try to find any excuse not to workout (write): laundry, car needs washing, bit of a cold, etc., but once I get there - in the gym (in the story) it's GREAT! I don't want to stop. Maybe it's like stagefright (which is also an affliction of mine), the thought of going on stage is horrifying, but once I'm there it's wonderful.

In the same way, I couldn't imagine going to the gym (writing) 7 days a week! Like working out, I have to take off a couple of days a week. The same with dieting - they say one of the keys to dieting is allowing yourself to cheat once in a while. I think that it's the same for writing. The danger lies in staying away too long. The longer you stay away, the harder it is to get back into it - gym, dieting, writing, whatever, so you have to be careful. Few and far between are the people who can really do these things on a constant, regular schedule without fail.

Maybe I'm wrong - maybe it's only those who CAN do these things on a constant, regular schedule without fail that truly succeed. I cheat on my gym, I cheat on my dieting, and I'm MODERATELY fit and healthy. Maybe cheating on my writing will limit me to being MODERATELY successful as a writer. Maybe that's good enough, maybe not.
 
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