~On Self Care and How to Relieve That Pesky Writer's Block~

[peritwinkle]

Greetings RPN! I hope you are all having a marvelous time and your creativity is at its peak; if not, then this post might be just helpful enough to get those creative juices flowing yet again.

Ah, writer's block! We all get it, and sometimes waiting it out is easier said than done. You find yourself sitting in front of your screen - be it your laptop, your PC or your plain ol' phone - and your mind is as blank as the Word document you are trying to fill up. Whether you are working on a chilled roleplay starter or your characters are caught in the middle of an inciting impasse, sometimes ideas are simply impossible to be translated into words. Over the years, I have gathered a bunch of little things that make feel better and help nourish the mind, that I hope you will find just as useful as I do.

• Spend your time ingesting art. Be it a good book, Victorian poems or paintings, the greatest source of inspiration sometimes does not only lie in our heads. A site that is pure fuel for my imagination is Artstation, and I have borrowed from artists like Lana Šator, Andreas Rocha, Anton Fadeev and Vyacheslav Safronov for as long as I can remember. For those of you who are fans of realistic (mostly female) faceclaims, the amazing photographer Marta Bevacqua on Behance is a godsend.

• Communicate with your writing partners. Find what the problem really is. On another note, an undeveloped idea that seems out of place when written down can take flight when a second mind joins the creative workshop. Left unsolved, it can slow down a roleplay and potentially make it die out. Lack of communication has been the cause of many of my losses, and I like to believe that I have learned a big load from my past mistakes in that matter.
  

• Shift your mind to something completely different. Are you stuck on a reply for a knight's adventure set in the middle ages of Europe? Great! Come up with a scenario for a peasant caught up in an unfortunate series of events in Feudal Japan! Taking another route can reset your mind when you find an obstacle you have been overdriving yourself to pass. Bear with me and think of it this way - eating one type of food for too long can get bland and uninteresting, no matter how good it was to begin with. Try a new recipe, and you might just find a couple ingredients that you can implement in your boring meal to make it pop again. Even if that fails, taking a small break from a story is still likely to help alleviate the pressure.

If exercises of the spirit prove to be ineffective, try giving your body some attention as well!

• The almighty bath (or shower). Cliche, I know, but trust me when I say submerging yourself in steaming liquid is probably the best thing you could do to help your body and mind. Hot water improves circulation and can help relieve pain that you did not even know was there. PRO TIP: Run the hot shower head over your nape, right at the base of your head, for a good few seconds. Thank me later.

• A proper snack. And no, I'm not talking about sugary, diabetes-inducing candy, but rather, the more tame version of that. Sometimes low energy derives from the lack of a good nutrition (or maybe, your body just needs a boost of energy to work at its peak again). What gets me back on my feet is a teaspoon of cacao (not to be confused cocoa - its more processed and sugary sibling) melted in a bit of warm milk and with a touch of sweetener to taste for those of us *REALLY* craving chocolate when we are low on will to live, or a plain old smoothie made with greek yogurt and fruit of your choice. (P.S.: The latter is what got me flashing through this post!)

• Being forgiving to your mind. If all else fails, then beating yourself over it will not spark your desire to write any more. Sometimes, it does take patience, and you should allow your mind some time to heal.

I hope you found at least one of these suggestions useful! What are your tips for when you're stuck in a ditch?

 

[Onmyoji]

• Being forgiving to your mind. If all else fails, then beating yourself over it will not spark your desire to write any more. Sometimes, it does take patience, and you should allow your mind some time to heal.

these are all good points, but the last one should be printed and framed on a wall.

I pretty much use all of these too and it usually helps.

Sometimes I'm just forcing myself to write and when the text actually comes out it flows much easier after. Can always edit later if you're not satisfied with what you wrote.

 

[peritwinkle]

Sometimes I'm just forcing myself to write and when the text actually comes out it flows much easier after. Can always edit later if you're not satisfied with what you wrote.

It's a brutal way to deal with it, but I admit it does work. I usually have to get past a certain scene that is going more slowly, then things start to really flow again.

 

[Idea]

This is a pretty nice tutorial you have here. Helpful and thoughtful. That said, I do have to disagree with this part here:

Shift your mind to something completely different. Are you stuck on a reply for a knight's adventure set in the middle ages of Europe? Great! Come up with a scenario for a peasant caught up in an unfortunate series of events in Feudal Japan! Taking another route can reset your mind when you find an obstacle you have been overdriving yourself to pass. Bear with me and think of it this way - eating one type of food for too long can get bland and uninteresting, no matter how good it was to begin with. Try a new recipe, and you might just find a couple ingredients that you can implement in your boring meal to make it pop again. Even if that fails, taking a small break from a story is still likely to help alleviate the pressure.

Letting yourself get distracted is a huge pitfal when it comes to writer's block. It is true that not forcing yourself to think about the thing can help, but it needs to be done in moderation. Our bodies are very bound to habit. Make good habits and doing what's good for you will become easier. Build bad habits and it will become harder. If you get yourself used to just doing something else whenever something because a little more difficult, you will find yourself having more and more trouble not getting distracted and actually putting in the effort to write.

When I was doing research on writing, as it regards to writer's block, writers had one common advice: Don't stop writing. If you need a distraction, write something else, but keep at it.


Now, another thing one can also do (getting into my own advice) is to change approach. Writer's block is often an issue of not coming up with ideas, which is a creative issue, or one of feeling some pressure in writing like feeling your post needs to be some grand thing to keep up or something. If that's the case, then trying to tackle the post froma more systematic perspective might help. Instead of thinking of the post as one continuous chunk, maybe splitting the post into tiny scenes that accomplish whatever you need to accomplish with the post might help.

Borrowing your example for instance, maybe you need to portray that knight as gallant and brave, and you need to make them acquainted with the other characters, plus of course give your partners to work somehting out of. Instead of thinking of the post as ethereal, trying to approach it by solving each of the individual tasks and stitching it together into a cohesive post is a potentially workable solution. Smaller problems are much easier and stress-free to tackle than bigger ones.


One more piece of advice I would share is do some work ahead. Sometimes you feel inspired, other times you'll feel like a dump. And the latter case is more common than the former because RPers still have lives outside of RP, and because writing isn't the kind of hobby that is always at the peak of excitement: you need to build it up, so slow moments are inevitable.

As such, it is good to have a back-up plan for those down moments. Prepare some flashbacks and arcs that work more or less regardless of circumstance, or tiny scenes or events you can easily transition to at any time. I would recommend planning ahead, but I know I'm an outlier when it comes to planning, so instead, maybe make some flashbacks and such before you need them, when you feel inspired to write (maybe if you feel inspired in between posts) and then put them in posts when you're not feeling as motivated.

 

[peritwinkle]

Don't stop writing. If you need a distraction, write something else, but keep at it.

That's exactly what I meant! Of course, in no way should we give up as soon as we find an obstacle and just pick up another toy, but shifting your mind to another story can sometimes help, as I said, when you feel like you are overdriving your brain.

One more piece of advice I would share is do some work ahead. Sometimes you feel inspired, other times you'll feel like a dump. And the latter case is more common than the former because RPers still have lives outside of RP, and because writing isn't the kind of hobby that is always at the peak of excitement: you need to build it up, so slow moments are inevitable.

As such, it is good to have a back-up plan for those down moments. Prepare some flashbacks and arcs that work more or less regardless of circumstance, or tiny scenes or events you can easily transition to at any time. I would recommend planning ahead, but I know I'm an outlier when it comes to planning, so instead, maybe make some flashbacks and such before you need them, when you feel inspired to write (maybe if you feel inspired in between posts) and then put them in posts when you're not feeling as motivated.

I could not agree more with this one. I often write flashbacks to help me get a better grasp of my character(s)'s personality, background and general outlook regarding life. However these scenes can come in handy in the actual roleplay as well, especially when things are a bit more slow and you are unsure what to write next.