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DREAMWEAVING

~ Ilan Lerman: Dark Fiction

DREAMWEAVING

Tag Archives: The Myth of Writer’s Block

Stories Happen

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Ilan Lerman in Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Creativity, Horror, Inspiration, Read Short Fiction, Sci-fi, Short Stories, speculative fiction, Tales to Terrify, The Myth of Writer's Block, Writing

It’s remarkable, despite my brain desperately not wanting me to write, my writing of old keeps following me around. Even though a small part of me does want to write, and actively craves it. Never the twain shall meet.

The inner critic is fierce. Strict. Relentless.

Yet, in a perfect example of why you should never give up on submissions: two submissions, out for so long I’d forgotten about them are now published.

First was in June last year, after twenty throws of the dice, Far From Regis Station was finally published on the website Read Short Fiction. A 4000 word story I wrote almost seven years ago. Paranoid SF horror with a side of mineralogy.

Second was last month, a reprint of a story I’m still proud of. Unpicking the Stitches was first published in ChiZine in 2011 when they had an online short fiction zine, but they soon shut it down in a familiar story of my adventures in online short fiction. You can listen to the story at Tales to Terrify, a horror podcast. My story starts around 21 minutes in.

Maybe one day I’ll collect some short fiction in a format. Maybe I’ll try to write a novel. Perhaps I might even randomly spew some thoughts onto this blog and try not to care what anyone thinks about it.

If the stars align correctly and certain events take place in the near future that I really don’t want to jinx by talking about in any detail, I may have a new writing space and truckloads of inspiration. Watch this space. Or don’t. Whatever…

The Easy Excuse (The Myth of Writer’s Block: Part 2)

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by Ilan Lerman in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Adversity, Edinburgh, Edinburgh flooding, Jay Lake, procrastination, Short Stories, The Myth of Writer's Block, Writing

This post coming to you from the depths of a nasty chest infection/cold and during the worst summer on record around here causing flooding on our street and in the area. Not the part 2 I’d originally intended, but thought it was worth getting this out as I am deep inside the territory of this subject.

As I’ve already said, I believe creative blockage is a complicated recipe affecting everyone differently with differing personal reasons behind every instance. I wanted to look at some of those individual reasons in more detail. Not because I want to try and give advice or expound any self-professed wisdom. No, this is as much for myself as anyone reading this (of whom I’m sure the audience is vast…). Apart from the pleasing irony of writing about writers block, it’s a good way to confess my sins of avoidance and procrastination. And at least I can feel like I’m doing this from a slightly more privileged position with a short story in progress to the tune of 3000 words(one I’m calling ‘Love as Deep as Bones’), and another already begun.

The easy excuse. Best example I can give is the situation I’m currently in. Several days laid out with a nasty virus. Coughing so hard I’ve pulled muscles in my back and chest etc… moan, complain… and there you go, what a handy excuse to not write. It’s hard to concentrate with a fever and you can’t settle. The real test is how you deal with that. I’ve lost count of the amount of stories that have run aground on the rocks of such an easy excuse. I mean, let’s face it, it’s not really the being ill that’s causing the problem, it’s my own brain.

All it amounts to is laziness. If the task ahead seems tough then, if (like me) you’re predisposed to taking the easy way out and avoiding the hard work, latching onto an excuse of being ill is the perfect justification. You can trick yourself into thinking that it’s okay. It’s not your fault. You can’t help being ill right?

WRONG.

This is Jay Lake – http://www.jlake.com/ No doubt familiar to anyone with a toe dipped into the world of SF. He has published several novels, hundreds of short stories and edited anthologies, winning various awards. He is intricately involved in SF and writing at all levels. He has also been battling cancer for the last four years. And writing about it, along with continuing his writing career to the fullest. You can read the personal blogging he’s done about cancer here – http://jlake.com/cancer_index.html

I use this example as a source of inspiration for the sort of punishment we can take yet carry on with the things we love. So much of it comes down to the individual and how they react to situations. I’m not saying you should be ashamed for not being strong and continuing in the face of adversity – we all have our own individual battles and subjective difficulties which can seem mountainous. No, it’s more that Jay Lake’s example can show you that is IS possible to carry on and if you feel compelled to write then nothing should really stop you.

Since I started this blog entry a few days have passed and I’m still recovering from this damned chest infection. And then we’ve had all this fun with flooding (which I’ll make a separate blog entry about, but certainly forms yet another easy excuse not to be writing).

The point is, life throws us all manner of adversities and the challenge is how we deal with them. It’s all too easy to fold in the face of personal difficulty, stop writing for a few days as a result and then call that ‘writer’s block’.

So that’s today’s thought-spaghetti unravelled. Now I have a story to finish writing.

The Myth of Writer’s Block (Part 1)

25 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Ilan Lerman in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Creativity, Inspiration, procrastination, The Myth of Writer's Block, Writing, Writing advice

A deliberately provocative title to the first in a series of rambling thought salads upon the blight affecting my creative pursuits for the last several months.

Let me say first, unequivocally, writer’s block is a myth.

And now to qualify that… There is no single catch-all affliction that infects only writers to the same extent across the board. You don’t one day wake up with a gritty throat, sneeze a couple of times and then find yourself unable to write a single word. There is always a (or many) deeper reason(s)for such a state to occur.

Being able to even write about this at the moment is some proof positive that I’m coming out the other side of a long self-imposed exile in a barren country. I’ve even begun writing a new short story (inspired in part by a useful prompt competition my writing group has been holding for a while now), but I still haven’t found that motivational balance required to stay on course. At this very moment my short story and I are circling each other around the room, maintaining a respectful distance, but all too aware that we have to tussle at some point.

So, I hear you ask, what are the reasons for this lengthy period of inactivity?

The reasons are manifold, and therein lies the problem of calling it writer’s block. It seems too easy to pass off a period of creative self-obstruction as ‘writer’s block’. And yes, it is ‘self’ imposed. There’s no masked lunatic holding a bowie knife to my trembling throat saying “write and you will die.” There’s no one other than myself sat in front of the computer with a document open. It’s my fingers that need to do the typing. And it really should be that simple. If you spend your entire waking existence thinking about writing, but aren’t doing it, then the only way to make it happen is… to write. As all of the various advice tells you, sometimes you have to allow yourself to write pages and pages of tripe so that the good stuff can emerge without you really noticing it.

For me, it’s been partly a dreadful penchant for self-critique where I might as well be whipping myself with rusty chains for not being able to make every sentence a perfect sculpture of meaning and form. Throw in several sacks of self-doubt where I compare myself to other writers and think I have nothing interesting to say or offer in the way of narrative voice. Sprinkle on some dayjob-tiredness and laziness in the face of breaking out of a routine of work/sleep/work/sleep/weekend/escape!/sleep/work etc… Finish with a propensity to avoid the hard work of writing – the edits, the rewriting, the tough decisions about when to trunk old stories, the colossal leaps involved in taking a good idea and turning it into a novel.

That’s just one recipe, and only a handful of the total ingredients in my own particular spaghetti of creative blockage. At first it’s easier to drift along and not write, stating that you need a break from it, but soon the not writing becomes harder than existing and it’s all you think about. Days, weeks, months pass and with every additional minute you aren’t writing it becomes harder and harder to start again, because like any creative pursuit you must practice and flex that muscle of craft. Go too long and watch your muscles atrophy so that the first time you do return to the writing, it might be not all that bad, but it’s like passing kidney stones and your ability to believe in it is fractured.

Becoming creatively blocked is such a personal thing and many people have their own advice for dragging yourself out of it, but it’s always down to you at the end of it all. You have to force yourself somehow to sit down, focus, and just write. I still don’t believe in writer’s block as an actual ‘thing’ that can be beaten if you only follow a particular course of treatment. It’s a war with your own impulses and identifying the source of the problem is often the main thing to accomplish, because it may be something much deeper and more all-encompassing in your own life that’s causing it. And before you know it, the feeling of being unable to complete anything, or even write a single word, is all wound up inside you like an invasive weed and you can cut it away, tug out the roots, pour weed-killer upon it, but it may be impossible to remove it all entirely.

I’ll write more upon this subject, and probably disagree with myself. Maybe even get into a bloody fistfight with my id and throw myself down a few flights of stairs. Anything except just punching some keys on a keyboard and forming the mystical hieroglyphics that make up simple words.

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