A book I read last year, Bird by Bird
by Anne Lamott, said to keep writing. Write every day. Write every
thing. It's all going to be crap in the beginning. But write it
anyway. I'm telling myself this today because I can't seem to get any
words out. I was excited to sit down and write tonight. It was
something I was looking forward to. But now that I'm here I'm
reminded, writing is work.
Magical thoughts don't just fly out of
your brain because you've decided it's time to do the work. This is
the normal life of a writer. Learning how to write when you aren't
inspired.
So here we go. The timer is set for one
hour.
Time!
An hour later, I have a nearly complete
review. A lot of it started out as bullet
points. And I rearranged entire paragraphs and rewrote every
sentence three times. What did I learn specifically from writing this
review while completely uninspired? Bullet points are a great
starting point.
After I got three bullet points down, my opinionated personality kicked in and started supplying the
commentary. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. When the
hour was up I didn't really want to stop. At this point, I still need
to pull up a quick search to find out how the movie did in the
theaters. I remember it wasn't a great turnout, but it also wasn't
terrible, but numbers speak louder than a vague recollection. Once I
collect that data, I can read through it again for a final edit and
then I'm ready to post.
What are your experiences with writing
when you're just not in the right frame of mind? How
do you get past “writer's block?”
