Over committed or simple brain freeze.
You’ve decided even a beginning writer should be able to knock out between 750 to 1,000 words at least twice a week, and that includes time for editing and fundamental rewriting. You know you have just finished reading the two hundredth blog post about writing 5000 words a day. So what is troubling you? If they can, you can. Why aren’t you? Most bloggers tell you that writer’s block comes from “trying to achieve too much” or a simple brain freeze. The odds are you do not have thirty publishers requesting your stories for publication in the next ten days. Most writers would call that Nirvana, not writer’s block.
When you are a beginning writer, usually frozen brain syndrome blocks you dead in your tracks, the reasons are without consequence and very silly. The problem is, “There are no words. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to say what I want to write.”
Step Back. Way Back.
When faced with the actual task of writing, there is one question you must answer. That answer will dictate not only what you write but how you write it. The simple, most elementary question about what to write is: what am I writing, fact or fiction? I understand if you are looking a tad askance. I am not discussing how to write. I am looking at how to get viable ideas for stories or blog posts about something.
Fiction from an Easier perspective.
Everyone loves a story and tellers of stories like Steven King and Dean Koontz are modern writers who are certainly idealized if not idolized. Yes,I know they really get unique ideas and we, mere fledgling writers, can’t get ideas like they do. Oh yes we do, and yes, we can. One of King’s best novels is The Stand and the idea behind The stand is the perpetual struggle between good and evil. The idea behind the book is not what makes it so damned good. It is the presentation of the idea and that is unique to the author. If you want to understand how important that truly is, read Marshall McLuhan’s, The Medium is the Message.
Very specific ideas to generate ideas for great fiction.
1) The Old and the New Testaments.
2) The Koran
3) The Bhagavad Gita
4) Grimm’s fairy Tales. When perusing Grimm’s for ideas, it is best to use an edition which is as close to the original tales as you can find. As you will learn, the tales are not for children.
Using any of these suggestions guarantees a lifetime supply of story ideas.
Ideas for nonfiction are harder to generate
We are looking for ideas that take the form of:
1) How do I accomplish <this>?
2) How should we feel about <this>
3) How Do we Achieve <this> or <that> .
The joys of blogging and writing essays are they provide the methods for us to make convincing arguments. Today’s bloggers are the debaters of three and four generations past. These people left the University stage to become the statesmen and the players on the international stage of world leadership from the middle of the 1900’s thru about 2012. What cut short their value was the introduction of the high-speed computer. Philosophers and debaters became modern bloggers. New ideas arise and fall as quickly as the concepts behind them.
It is far harder to look for and explain truths in an age when there are fewer and fewer exacting truths. I would posit it more challenging to prove 1 == 1 than arguing the same one hundred years ago. Suppose you choose to write about assumed truths or hypothetical facts, such as the laws of “good writing.” In that case, you must throw yourself into the pot, grab an idea, and start writing about it.
Summary: What’s stewing in the pot.
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I hope if you are searching for something in the fictional world, I have been more than just a little help. If you think, “Really, How will the bible really allow me to write good fiction.” Let me give you one particular example and why don’t you use it as a springboard and do one better. Read Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.
In a world of truth-telling, things get a tad more complex. Your ideas will genuinely have to come from within you. To the basic three constructs I’ve mentioned, I would add two suggestions to offer serious help on your quest. Once you’ve found an idea you wish to explore, research it and then outline every salient point. Write it using your unique style.
Once written, you will know beyond any doubt for whom the cursor blinks.