Let’s talk about writers’ block.
This is something that everyone seems to disagrees about. Some people say it doesn’t exist. Some say you should just write through it. Others argue you should sit back and wait for it to pass.
My Writers’ Block is a kind of emptiness. If I’m not feeling any strong emotion, I have a really hard time motivating myself to write. I don’t get ideas. I don’t care about what I’m writing. I’m easily distracted. I’ll write a sentence, and stop. I’ll open a blank document, stare at it, then abandon it for TV or the internet.
I know I’m more susceptible to this if I’m tired, or being lazy. This summer, I’ve been both. I’ve spent most of my time at home, on the internet or watching TV, sometimes reading. I’ve seen my friends but I just haven’t had any inspiration. Nothing motivating has happened. I get out of bed, but I never really wake up, mostly because I don’t have to. It’s summer. I don’t have any of the stress or emotions of school driving me to write.
Writing, on its most basic level, is therapeutic for me. It calms me and helps me release difficult emotions. It helps me cope with stress. It helps me process situations I’ve gone through, even if I’m not writing about anything directly related to the event.
But in summer, I just haven’t needed that much therapy, because I haven’t been doing anything.
I haven’t been writing Hell and Styx. I’ve been editing draft 1 and planning draft 2 of Devil May Care, but I haven’t actually written anything for it in months.
I haven’t had any motivation to write fiction.
It’s a cruel irony, that school gives me inspiration to write but no time, and summer gives me time to write but no inspiration.
Then again, this is a pattern I’ve seen every year. I never write that much during summer. I always give myself big goals (finishing whatever novel I’m working on at the time is a classic) for summer break, and then school comes around again and I haven’t accomplished anything. This summer is actually one of my most productive ones so far, if only because I’ve been blogging.
So here’s my question:
Does blogging count as writing?
Writing as in, if you were going to challenge yourself to write 5000 words a day, would you count both blog posts and creative writing? Writing as in, does blogging make you a better writer?
Yes, I’m putting words into logical sentences. But I’m not working on plot structure or characterization. I use a very casual diction; I’ll shamelessly admit that I use too many adverbs. I’m not careful. I’m not telling a story. I’m more emotionally invested in how many likes a post gets than the post itself (which is pathetic, I know).
I guess it is good that I’m writing at all. If I didn’t have this blog, I wouldn’t have spent this entire morning working on posts to publish later, I would have watched TV or gone on Pinterest. I’m producing sentences. My fingers have remembered how to type. Yay!
But it doesn’t feel like enough. I know I should just get up off my ass and write something fictional, if that’s what I’m beating myself up about.
Unfortunately, I beat myself up way too often for it to motivate me any longer. I know they’re idle threats.
What do you guys think? What’s writers’ block for you, and how do you deal with it? And do you consider your blog posts to be the in same vein of writing as creative writing?
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