Writer’s Block

First off, thank you all SO much for your contributions to Anonymous Thoughts already. I am genuinely shocked and amazed by the amount of responses I’ve received.

I think I’ve responded to you all as to whether your comment will go up on the page or not, but if not I’ll get back to you guys as soon as. And if you’re comment isn’t going up for one reason or another, I’m sorry, but thank you for sharing with me.

Secondly, a few of you have been asking when I’m going to post my next YouTube video. Honestly right now I don’t have an answer to that question.

I planned to film this week, but I’ve obviously been ill so didn’t get around to it. I have a few ideas, so I’ll hopefully post again soon; I don’t want to get out of swing and then find it too hard to come back.

I guess all I can say for now is I’ll keep you posted.

I’m not exactly sure where to begin with this week. So much has happened since the last time I wrote to you guys, and yet not much has changed.

There was one specific thing which I thought would change a lot, but actually things have remained normal, which is partly a relief and partly... well, I haven’t decided yet.

I suppose the fundamental thing about this week is I’ve been ill all week; I’ve been trying to deny that fact, despite the obvious signs, but it’s been a long week due to that. I’ve just felt so tired and out-of-it. Just summoning the effort to get out of bed has been enough of a challenge.

And this week I remembered that assignments are a thing... and I have one due next week...

I comfort myself I’ve started it - that can do for now. I’ll worry about the rest of it after I’ve finished this.

The theme of this week’s post originates back to Monday. In drama (where most of my ideas come from these days) we did an introductory exercise which particularly appealed to me and that started me thinking about writer’s block.

Essentially, the exercise was to write down your thoughts.

At first, we had to just keep writing down things for a minute – there was no specific topic, just the caveat that you had to keep writing continuously for a whole minute. Harder than it sounds.

As I’d been working on it over the weekend, I continued writing a scene for my latest Serena and Alex (for new readers, they are the characters from my main murder mystery series). I can’t believe I’m on book 4… time flies when you’re having fun ;)

(Side note: I’ll be sharing a teaser extract or two of the first book of that series “The Past Never Dies” soon before it’s PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK. I still can’t believe that’s real, but it is.)

Secondly, our lecturer gave us 30 seconds to write down things that made us happy.

This was the list I came up with: Light rain. The flicker of sunshine amid trees.

Laughter. Watching young children play. Sharing memories. Reading. Writing. Sitting by the window and looking out. Christmas.

After that, we wrote about things that filled us with awe: Fairy lights. Looking at the stars. Beautiful lines of poetry or verse (particularly Shakespeare – aimed at you Cal 😉). Love. Watching waves beat against the shore.

We also wrote about things that made us angry and sad, but I’m not going to share what I wrote for those as it’s quite personal.

Finally, we had to write something good about someone in the room. No point in writing that out as most of you won’t know the people I wrote about, but it was a cute way to finish the exercise.

Long back-story short, I thought this exercise provided quite a good remedy to a problem that all writers suffer from: writer’s block.

Whenever I’m struggling to write something, I start writing something else (which explains the numerous extracts on my laptop). It helps to start the flow of words, and once you’ve managed to put something down, you can direct it towards something more specific.

So, if you’re struggling with writer’s block, I recommend trying this exercise or something like it. You’ll be surprised by how well it works.

And if that doesn’t work, you can always try something else I used to do; storyboarding. When you’re struggling to write a new scene or chapter or whatever else it may be, if you try to storyboard out a basic structure or format, it’ll be so much easier.

For example, I was really struggling with writing the second half of “Never Fall For The Bad Boy”, but once I had planned out where I wanted the story to go, it was so much easier to write out what happened next.

(The next chapters are going to be up on Inkitt soon – just redrafting a few bits at the moment – hold tight with me)

So, I hope the above techniques are helpful for any of you who are suffering from or have ever suffered from writer’s block. It totally sucks, but you’ll work through it I promise.

Comment down below some things that make you happy. I think that would be a nice way to finish this post.

Have a great weekend.

#writersblock #advice #roxyelle