To beat writer's block, you need to write.
I learned this from Julia Cameron and then Anne Lamott drove it home.
Write three pages, longhand. This is what Julia Cameron advises in The Artist's Way and I what I did for the 12 weeks that I followed her program.
Then I switched to doing my "morning pages," as she calls them, on the computer. Then I stopped altogether.
Then I became blocked.
On the computer it turns out, I was editing myself, which is fine when I am drafting an essay but not when I am trying to unlock my creative muse. The editing also took longer and made it feel more like a chore.
I am now getting started most days by hand writing those three pages. Often, by the time I'm done, I have a pretty good idea of what I am going to write that day.
I wish I didn't have to keep being reminded to do the things that are good for me.
I would save myself a lot of grief.
2 comments:
Oh yeah! Things that are good for you ARE harder to remember. I'm sure that's why history repeats itself so often.
I can't hand write worth a darn. I write so slow, my brain is a couple of sentences ahead of my pen, and by the time I've made progress, entire paragraphs are missing.
I like to use the computer because it has spell check. I don't fix stuff on the spot, but I do go back and edit once I've reached the end.
My blogging suffers from another creativity blockage... lack of time!
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