Young Writers Society

I've just gotten over a one-and-a-half month period of writer's block. It's one of the most exciting things that's happened to me!

Surprisingly, there wasn't any real reason for it. It just suddenly hit. I've been taking a break from the sequel to my first novel, and was trying to work on it again when inspiration washed over like an ocean wave. I've written four short stories in two days!

Does this ever happen to anyone else? I know everybody gets writer's block, except for a few people who told me that writing is a job and not a hobby so it can't get blocked, but is it always so sudden to break out of it?

That's happened to me too. Well, I never actually stop writing, but there seems to be times where all I'm doing is revising old work and not actually producing anything. At least not anything good. Then, suddenly... I've got a bunch of new ideas that, surprisingly, get put on paper fairly easily. And then another bunch of ideas. And then another. And then it's writer's block again.

A lot of times I get smacked upside the head with writer's block...it always comes right after I finish something big, too...

It took me eight or nine, maybe ten months before I could get writing my novel It's in the Blood, and it's taken me yet another three months to really start writing A Foggy Glass and Keep it Cool...

I've pretty much accepted it as a cycle for me; and I'm sure when I finish the two stories above, it'll hit again...

Then again, by that time I'll be back in school and be too busy to really worry about that...you gotta love college.

I don't suffer from Writer's Block anymore, because the block spends so much time with me that I hardly refer to myself as a writer anymore. I swear, the worst thing that could ever happen to my productivity was having a good idea for a novel. And now nothing I write sounds as good as my idea.

Once when there was a cash prize up for grabs I miraculously snapped out of it, but that was three years ago. I lost the competition but at least I called myself a writer for a brief period.

Anyway, congratulations on beating the block. I guess some people have sledgehammers to take care of it, while the rest of us have to try to get through it with toothpicks.

I don't know. I can never tell the difference between writer's block and just being lazy. I think it mostly happens when I stop writing in the middle of a chapter. Then I go back, and I have to look at the words to see where I left off. Then I have to edit it because something's wrong, and...you get the idea.

I find that reading inspires me, like reading a good review in a magazine, or going through my old work (whether it's notes or a fully-fledged story.)