Comments on: 5 ways to deal with writer's block

By: Kirk

Kirk — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:02:24 +0000

Hey hey. Good news. I hope you enjoy it. And if you figure out how to get over your block, maybe you can teach me how…

By: Sacha Chua

Sacha Chua — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:12:08 +0000

Kirk: "On Writing Well" has arrived from the library. Yay! =)

By: Sacha Chua

Sacha Chua — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:10:09 +0000

Diane: Write whatever comes to mind, even if it doesn't seem very profound or anything like that. If nothing comes to mind, fool yourself by talking to people or e-mailing people or whatever else you do to communicate–then writing about that. From the looks of your blog, you're doing fine. =)

As for not wanting to reveal too much–can't do anything about that. =) I find that there's so much I want to write about that I'm not too worried about revealing more than I intended…

By: Diane

Diane — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:13:27 +0000

My problem is that often I can't think of anything to write about. A secondary problem is that I don't want to reveal too much through my writing.

By: Sacha Chua

Sacha Chua — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:24:32 +0000

Raymond: Could be. I remember liking that book. I also really enjoyed The Right to Write. The five-minute trick is something that's also described a number of other places, like this blog post about writing in five minute sprints. It's a generally useful tool for anything that you're procrastinating. Somehow, five minutes feels like a very doable segment of time.

And yes, I still run into writer's block. I sometimes find it hard to write about the things I want to write about. I want to show people how to use tags on projects and all sorts of other cool things about Org and Planner. Sometimes I feel that Emacs is so very big and I am so very small. I'm glad that I've managed to get the hang of Org enough to write about it despite having only used it for a couple of months. Some of the other things I want to write about are hard for me to describe because I'm not too familiar with them myself. I could write based on the manual and other blog posts on the net, but it's not the same as writing from experience, with cool hacks from my config or other people's config files. I'm sure I'll think of more things over time. I'll be working on this book for another year. =)

The encouragement I get from people really helps keep me going, though! =D

By: If you throw enough pots | sacha chua :: blog

If you throw enough pots | sacha chua :: blog — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:18:57 +0000

[...] feel like doing it. It's funny, but once I start writing, things come a little more easily. Kirk is right. I don't have to expect my first draft to feel right. I just have to get it out there, so [...]

By: Raymond Zeitler

Raymond Zeitler — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:28:03 +0000

You wrote, "Write for five minutes about anything." Did you get that from "The Artist's Way?" This book is geared more to creativity and artistic endeavors rather than technical writing, though.

And I don't understand why you think you have writer's block. Didn't you just post a huge amount of material?

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:11:18 +0000

Have you ever read On Writing Well by William Zinsser? If I remember correctly — it's a 50-50 shot — he basically says that as a professional writer, he just forces himself to write something. It seems to me — and this is likely much less than 50-50 — that editing is the majority of the task of writing, so if you can push out something now, no matter how hard it is, you can return to it later and improve it.

As you can see, I'll never be a writing coach. I try to apply what I've learned as a distance runner, where you must train even if you don't want to, to writing.

No, this isn't very helpful… if you'd like to borrow my copy of On Writing Well, I'd loan it to you.