Advice/Help Im Just a Kid, and Life isa Nightmare!

[BlackBerryJam09]

Hi there, I'm Angel!

I have a question, how do you come back from a break of creative flow. I have been writing for a while now, my oldest piece is from... lemme go check. Sept, 18th 2023. That was my first actual story that inspired me to write. After that I just had A LOT of things happen.

Other several months I wrote several short stories. My shortest one is less than 200 words. I'm proud of my work. I really am, it's just I can't find my spark anymore. It's making the brain go brrr, and not ina fun way.

I really wanna get back into writing. I just can't make myself like anything that I write. I used the technique: just keep writing. It didn't do me much good. I just wanna have my hobbies back, ya know?

-BlackBerryJam09

 

[Daisie]

Well! I'd say first off, keep in mind that you only started 8 months ago, which is not really a long time. It may seem like it is, but writing is something that takes crazy amounts of time to do. Much less master. There's absolutely no reason you need to rush any of it, particularly when you're starting out!

If it makes you feel better, my greatest creative outlet is art, and sometimes there have been YEARS between creative sparks. It didn't make me any less of an artist! All the same, not feeling the spark to write doesn't make you any less of a writer, either. Right now you should just focus on what stuff you want to write, not out of obligation, but out of recreation.

It helps to write for the sake of the process, itself. Not to enjoy the outcome, necessarily! That will come with time.

 

[BlackBerryJam09]

I mean yeah, I get that. It's just hard to think that it's only been 8 months. And, I know it's a process, and I am trying to practice my patience. It's a skill that I need to work on.

I get that too. This is a new hobby for me. And normally if I'm not good ar a hobby first try, I get uninterested. And my other hobbies were ones I started as a kid. And, I grew up fast, mentally wise. Time flew by when I was younger.

I'll take that into account, it sounds like a great idea to me. Thank you for your time! I appreciate it.

 

[Daisie]

And, I know it's a process, and I am trying to practice my patience. It's a skill that I need to work on.

Hahahah, you and me both! Patience is a sucker.
5 years ago I got out of chemo and couldn't focus on anything academic for more than 15 minutes at a time. It's been a really gradual work upwards since then, from 15 minutes to 30 to an hour... I still struggle sometimes, but just this past week I managed to buckle down and work on my animations for 3-4 hours per day, with a half-hour break in the middle. No way I could have done that a few years ago.

It still really burnt me out tbh. I can't wrap my mind around how people my age can sit at a job for 8 hours every weekday. Everyone's at a different level of patience and self-discipline.

Hopefully we'll both just keep on getting better, regardless of where we're starting from.

The good news is that our hobbies only die when we say they do. Whether it's been 3 months or 20 years since you've last engaged in a hobby, it's not abandoned until you officially decide you aren't going back to it. There's no magical amount of time where it's suddenly "been too long" to return (like I catch myself thinking all the time), you can always pick it right back up again whenever you want to. It's never too late to revisit.

Edit: unless you're an arthritic 80-year-old, and your hobby is pole-vaulting. Then that might be too late.

Edit 2: holy moly, there's an 82-year-old pole vaulter

 

[BlackBerryJam09]

Hahahah, you and me both! Patience is a sucker.
The good news is that our hobbies only die when we say they do.

Good to know I'm not alone. If anything I'll try to write something I wanna write. It's just hard to find something that I do wanna write.

That's good, cause I'm not done yet! I'm just getting started.

Thank you..

 

[Beckoncall]

As somebody who presently is (hopefully) coming off a months long bout of writers block -- I can only say THE MUSE COMES AND GOES. Make sure you take breaks from writing because that's totally healthy and a great way to revive your excitement about writing. Even Writers for award winning shows take breaks between seasons to change pace or take a break.

You love writing. Writing loves YOU. You will be reunited, even if you have to take a break. Don't make writing a job or pressure yourself to write, there are other creative things you can do -- even just thinking about your craft.

I salute you and hope you and others are delighted by your writing for years, or even generations to come.

-Beck

 

[GojiBean]

Hoyo Angel!

As someone who's been roleplaying for... Gawd I hate saying this... 27 years, lemme tell ya that it's perfectly normal to be in the situation you're in right now. So don't beat yourself up about it. And as Daisie suggested do your best to practice and develop your patience as there's no rushing your creative muse. However, you can encourage it if you approach it correctly. We'll get into that in a bit.

But for now just know that creative efforts are almost solely driven by your inspiration which comes and goes at a moment's notice.

For example, sometimes it'll come at the worst possible times like when you're about to go to sleep and then your brain goes "WAIT! I HAZ AN IDEA!!!" And then you can't sleep for six more hours because the ideas are flowing and you're speeding on the keyboard to type it all out before your brain forgets everything (totally NOT speaking from experience on this one).

And other time it will seem to be on a permanent vacation (totally NOT speaking from experience there either).

But what about the whole "encourage it" thing I mentioned earlier? Well, here are some things I've done over the last 27 years which have all helped me at some point or another to push my brain in the right direction (in no particular order):

• Create a routine
• Try small/short exercises
• Get a piece of paper and draw a random shape
• Do something non-creative which helps relax you
• Watch a film/tv episode/anime episode, or play a video game that you really love
• Try creating a situation on paper with no defined characters, setting details, etc
• Scroll through image sites like pinterest or your image gallery of choice and critically examine the characters and images you see

There are other things I've done throughout the years. But I've forgotten many of them cause I'm old. XD

That said, some or perhaps even none of these might work for you. But if you really want your muse back then I believe they're all worth giving a shot.


Create A Routine

Creating a routine, providing you're consistent with it, can often help train your brain to put itself in a creative mode. I recommend 15 minutes to start. And in that 15 minutes just write something. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a little blurb or journal entry about something that you saw or did today. It could be a mini scene or mini story like you'd find in a children's book. Anything at all.

The point of the routine is to create a consistent stream of success. Every time you finish writing for 15 minutes, no matter what you wrote or how long/short it may be, you've succeeded in writing something. This helps train your brain that when it's writing time, it's writing time. And eventually you'll be able to put yourself in this zone without the need for a 15-minute block of time. You'll just think to yourself "Hmm... What if I put a character like this into this situation? What would they do?" And just like that, your brain is off and running.

Try Small/Short Exercises

This is something I do to this day, though not as consistently as I used to. The point here is to create a list of fixed situations that you like to play out in RP's, and to create random characters to respond to them. For example, you could have a list like this:

- A marketplace disruption
- A battle on the road in the middle of nowhere
- A dark dead forest where a magical serpent suddenly attacks from the murky knee-high water
- At a royal ball
- Etc.

With your list created, randomly come up with a character who has maybe 3 simple personality traits you want to focus on and dedicate maybe 5 minutes to put them in and play out a short scene using one of your situation list options as the setting.

For example, a hot headed, introverted, anti-noble guardsman who's forced to attend the royal ball where the guests are all nobles. Then, play out a short scene. Even if it's just him looking around and analyzing the noble's faces and shaking his head while thinking "You all suck and I wish something would happen to kill at least some of you so this city could have a few less snakes in its garden."

Let's say this is what you come up with in those 5 minutes. Perfect. Done. Check it off and save it somewhere in a folder or something. Then, create a new character with 3 different personality traits, and put them in and play out a 5 minute scene in another situation from your list. Once the five minutes is up, done. Perfect. Check it off and save it somewhere.

By allowing yourself to take it in small, bite sized chunks of 5 minutes like this you give your brain time to be creative without giving it a chance to burn itself out trying to do too much. Because trying to do too much is, in my opinion and having observed others for 27 years, one of the biggest obstacles for younger/newer writers. Trying to do too much with too little experience, or too few tools in the writer's tool kit, if that makes sense.

There's no shame in whittling things down to their most basic elements and focusing on small, short exercises like these to help build up the mental repetitions needed to help your brain become more consistently creative for longer periods of time the more you get used to the exercise.

Get a piece of paper and draw a random shape

This might sound weird, but hear me out.

When I say random, I mean random. Like, just grab a pencil and squiggle and swerve all over the place until you're satisfied. Almost like you're taking out your aggression on the paper. Just be sure not to tear it.

Once you're satisfied with the drawing, put the pencil aside and just look at whatever it is you've drawn. And try to make shapes, characters, or ideas out of what you see.

For example, can you spot a series of curves and intersections which kind of look like a face? If so, grab the pencil and darken the lines along the outline of the face. Done! You've gotten a face from nothing but squiggles!

Flip the paper over and repeat the exercise. Squiggle away and then analyze it to see what you can see. Maybe this time you see a series of lines and shapes which kind of look like a street with buildings on one side. Grab the pencil and darken those lines until you're happy and then get a new piece of paper and repeat the process a few more times.

Creativity is often born of necessity. And when you have nothing but squiggles to go off of your brain automatically forces itself to switch gears and start using your memory and experiences to shape the reality of what you're looking at. That's why you can see a vague shape of a face or a street with buildings amongst nothing but random squiggles. It's kind of amazing what our brains are capable of when we open our minds to the possibilities.

And the more you do this, the more you'll be able to see something out of what appears to be nothing. And this ties into the final bullet point listed which we'll come back to when we get there.

Do something non-creative which relaxes you

Take a walk (if you have a pet to walk with, bring them along). Speaking of pets, if you have any then maybe play with them for a while. Take a bath/shower. Go lie down for 10-15 minutes. Go outside and just look around at the houses, trees, etc. Go to the park and sit on a bench and look out at whatever's there to see. Go visit a garden. Go to the gym. Something.

Sometimes your brain just needs to reset itself through non-creative activities before it can muster up the energy to enter a creative space.

So, it's worth trying.

Watch a film/tv episode/anime episode, or play a video game that you really love

This one is simple. Just watch something or play something from a franchise you dearly love and analyze the elements and characters you love most to figure out what it is about them that makes you love them so much.

For example, my oldest character from the very first story and roleplay I ever created was based loosely off Shadow the Hedgehog. After playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube and absolutely falling in love with Shadow as a character, his backstory, his character design/appearance, etc. And it inspired me to want to create a character like him with some of his features/traits (with my own creative twists, obviously), and that gave rise to something which persists to this day. That character is still with me and still actively being used in roleplays here and on other sites.

It's notoriously difficult, if not impossible to inspire yourself from nothing. So, try inspiring yourself from things you love and let them be a jumping off point for you.

Find a character you really love from a video game/film/anime/etc., and then try creating a character who is very similar in as many ways as you can manage, and then try designing a home for that character. What would be in it? What sorts of furniture would they have? Would they live alone or have a family? Would they have a garden, a front yard/back yard, would they plant a tree (or several), or perhaps buy a home near trees, would their home be in the heart of town or on the outskirts closer to nature, etc, etc?

The more questions you can answer about this character you've created, the more invested in them you will become. And the more invested you become, the more ideas will continue to pop into your head to inspire yet further details to flesh out this character's life and story. And the more this character's life and story are fleshed out, the more you'll start to envision an entire world around them for them to inhabit and interact with.

Try creating a situation with no defined characters, setting details, etc.

Sometimes your brain needs a break from characters, character traits and backstories, entire story arcs and narrative through lines, etc.

In such cases, take a step back and just try creating situations with nothing defined except the situation itself. For example:

• A city guard in a medieval town trips on an empty box
• A dragon flies over a mountain
• A bird flies through a forest
• An average joe throws a football
• A politician walks out of his house

That's it. Just a single short sentence to describe a situation. But don't take it further than that.

Don't bother defining physical traits like what kind of armor the guard is wearing, what color the dragon is or how tall the mountain its flying over is, how thick the forest canopy is above the bird as it flies, who the average joe is throwing the football to, or what the politician sees when he walks out of his house.

The whole point of this exercise is to train your brain to be capable of coming up with situations on the fly. Because without a situation you have no setup for conflict in your story. And the beating heart and lifeblood of all storytelling across all mediums is conflict.

So, train your brain to come up with situations. And again, don't worry about defining anything. Just make a list of short, one-sentence situations and let that be enough. The next day, do it again with a new list of situations. The next day, do it again with yet another new list. And again and again and again.

The more your brain gets used to coming up with situations on the fly, the more it will naturally seek to define those situations. And once your brain is itching and yearning and pleading with you to start filling out the details, your muse will kick in and you'll be off and running.

And finally...

Scroll through image sites like pinterest or your image gallery of choice and critically examine the characters and images you see

Sometimes your brain just needs to see the right picture of a character, a beautiful landscape, a mysterious dungeon, an exotic temple, etc to find inspiration to create a story scenario with characters and conflict and stakes.

This is by far the easiest one to do since it requires little to no brainpower to actually start. But it's also the least consistent in my own experience. Sometimes it doesn't matter how beautiful and detailed the pictures you find are, your brain just goes "That's really purdy," and then you move on to the next picture before losing interest and going away from the gallery.

That's okay, and perfectly normal.

There's a reason this one's last on my list, after all. It's the one I use the least often. But occasionally I'll find that one gem of a picture that just screams "Now THIS is begging to be further expanded upon and turned into an RP!"

So, give it a shot!


Hopefully at least some of these ideas help you out!

I know that the burning drive to get your muse going is strong and sometimes can be depressing when it ignores how badly you want it to find its spark. But if it's refusing to budge on its own then try giving it a bit of encouragement with some of these exercises and processes.

I said it before, some or none are guaranteed to work.

But trying something is alwyas better than doing and accomplishing nothing! And, if nothing else, these exercises will all help you to accomplish something.

Cheers!

- GojiBean