- Open a document and try writing a funny list of what to do when you get writer’s block.
- Congratulate yourself on having an idea.
- Realize you’re up to three and you haven’t really thought of any more.
- Pet your cat.
- Check Twitter.
- Sip your coffee and realize it got cold.
- Microwave your coffee as your husband tells you, yet again, that he thinks that’s gross.
- Look at your “to do” list and find you can’t read your own handwriting.
- Hey look you’re at nine!
- Make an appointment at a new hair salon because you just wanna shake it up a little.
- Immediately feel guilty for ditching your regular hairdresser for just this time.
- Okay appointment made, back to the list!
- Consider the ridiculous nature of something called “writer’s block” in the first place. You are not a mechanic. There is not a job in front of you that can be completed by a set of tasks in a certain order that you can accomplish. You almost miss when you had a job like that, where you could just put on headphones and upload a bunch of photos into the backend of a website, or do light coding until three hours had gone by and you barely even knew. Now, it’s just you and your thoughts, and time is money. The only thing blocking you is you, but there’s no way to change it. Or maybe there is, by releasing yourself and understanding that the brain is not a content machine. There will be days when you don’t do your best work, or any work at all, and that’s okay. You’re still thinking of things, and that’s still work, even if you don’t get a single word on the page. Forgive yourself.
- Oh hey look 14 that’s probably good enough.
HERE FOR GHOSTWRITER. I will talk about Who Is Max Mouse? all goddamn day. THAT WAS SOME INTENSE SHIT
Omg I love 90s hackers plots!!! Also I found the Slime Monster episode yesterday, an episode that kept me up at night when I first watched it and set in motion a lifelong habit of sleeping with my back to a wall so it couldn’t sneak up behind me.
yessss
Also, whoa, thanks Wikipedia for this information:
“Ghostwriter producer and writer Kermit Frazier revealed in a 2010 interview that Ghostwriter was the ghost of a runaway slave during the American Civil War. He taught other slaves how to read and write and was killed by slave catchers and their dogs. His soul was kept in the book that Jamal first discovered in the pilot episode, and when Jamal opened the book he was freed.“
WHAT
That is… somewhat darker than the tone I remember.
That was entirely subtext though, right? Like they never actually had a plot where that was all spelled out for kids watching at home?
Because I think I would probably remember a thing like that being a plot point.
I could swear to you it was in at least one of the books.
The quote was from an interview with the writer/producer in 2010, so yeah I don’t think that was actually in the show.
The slime monster was TERRIFYING
GOOEY GUS.
freaking gooey gus. it gave me terrible nightmares and now i sleep with my back to the wall, too.
Oh man. I only vaguely remember Ghostwriter, but I’m pretty sure I remember the slime monster and I’m pretty sure it’s now the reason my bed always backs up to a wall. Was it purple? I seem to remember purple.
ETA: And google confirms that yes, it was indeed purple and justifiably terrifying. Excuse me. Not going to sleep for a while now.
I also have a soft spot for the very first mystery, the one with:
-the backpack theft ring…
-…crewed by arcade junkies…
-…who disguise themselves in two-faced fright masks à la Amadeus.
Haha, yes. As a kid I also loved how each mystery was spread out over 3-4 episodes. It took awhile to figure out what those masked backpack thieves were up to!
THABTOs: Two Heads Are Better Than One!
I don’t remember how I joined, but I was totally part of the Ghostwriter Fan Club. I think you just sent a letter to PBS (possibly with a self-addressed, stamped envelope included) and then they sent you a letter and an actual card that you could sign to show that you were a legitimate member of the club. I wish I still had that card, but young me tossed it out because she was a fool.
Was there a sticker? I seem to remember there was a sticker.
Do you guys remember the Drugs Episode with the kid named Kevin getting the shit beat out of him by a drug dealer? I remember being like 9 and it was the darkest thing I had ever seen.
OMG, despite having watched every episode at least three times apiece, this is the only one I can actually remember to this day– it was SO intense! There were guns or something involved, too, weren’t there?!
I really loved the episode that was set half in the 1920s (?), and half in the actual timeline of the show, and there were letters hidden behind a loose brick. THAT WAS SO COOL GHOSTWRITER IS A TIME TRAVELER.
That was a good one!
Oh, my gosh. The memories. I had such a huge crush on Lenni… which is weird, given JUST how gay I am now.
Vivid, vivid memories of tetrochloroethylene. … Yes. That was it. They found it buried in barrels in a park or something. How in the HELL do I remember that?
Yes! TCE! I work in environmental consulting now and every time I have to run TCE as a contaminant of concern I think of that episode.
Once I had really bad writer’s block, so I wrote about the science of writer’s block.
When I can’t write, I think “Hell, no one’s paying me! Nap time!”
I gave up on #5 – it would take me all day.
This list is eerily accurate.
I really liked the Ghostwriter novelizations. Because why watch a tv show about a ghost that liked books when you could read a book about a ghost that liked books?
I definitely owned at least five or six of these, plus The Team: On and Off the Set.
… Just wikied… I think I actually owned more like twelve or fifteen. Welp.
Ugh yeah I’ve been staring at this blank Google doc for days trying to get started on this thing I know I NEED to write (for my own mental health), but that I can’t get started on. I feel like once I start it’ll be ok, but I can’t find a good starting place. Argh.
Try just doing stream of consciousness writing about whatever topic. Don’t even worry what you’re saying, or if it makes sense. Alternatively, you can try my super effective writer’s block eliminator: write as if it was a specific character speaking. I work for a craft magazine, so whenever I have writers block because I’m writing about embroidery scissors for our products department for the 900th time, I first write the description as if I were a James Franco Character. As in, “These scissors are mad dope, yo! They are shaped like a fish and that is OFF THE HOOK.” Then I just go through and change “mad dope” to “exquisitely crafted” and so on and so forth. I don’t know why it works, but it does. Pick a character or a writing style and just go with it. Once you have a paragraph or two written, edit it to sound more human and you’ve got something to build on.
Yeah my approach this afternoon is to write longhand stream of consciousness to just get SOMEthing out.
i love this. do you ever accidentally forget to change things back and have product descriptions about how these knitting needles are totally sick, dude?
As of yet I’ve not left in any Francoisms or obscenities (which I also use profusely sometimes to help with writers block). Fortunately, even if I did my editor reads everything after I write it and she has an excellent sense of humor. My copy editor, however, would probably treat me odd forever after were she to catch a, “This handcrafted boat shuttle is the shit, yo!”
Where can I pick up some mad dope scissors? Mine are merely exquisitely crafted and that’s just not doing it for me.
So the maddest, dopest scissors I’ve ever had the pleasure to review are these amazing little Japanese shears that looks like miniature garden implements. They were incredibly well made, crazy cool looking, and super expensive, although they were designed to last a lifetime. I wish I could remember the name of the company that sold them, but it was probably two years ago, and of course we had to send them back after photography.
Sometimes making a list of keywords or phrases and then fleshing them out incrementally works for me
Mallory is clearly a witch. Right?
I came down to the comments to say EXACTLY THIS!
Mallory is a witch, and I bet she would be glad to have that thought of her.
15. procrasticleaning: suddenly folding laundry and cleaning the kitchen are the only things that matter
Yeah, there’s nothing like writing to make housework look attractive. Even cleaning the kitchen cabinets.
There’s usually only one thing on my list.
1. Go make brownies. Maybe the chocolate will help.
My dorm room was never cleaner than during final paper season in college.
The best advice I’ve gotten, and I think this might have been from Mallory (?) was to really take stock of all that encompasses your writing and realize that, especially if you live on the internet in some capacity, you’re writing all the time, informally and for free. Basically anything that you can write or have written 100 words about is something that can be turned into a piece. Those might be ~*HOT TAKES*~ more often than not but fuck New Media snobbery tbh, people read them and you can get paid for them, so write them. You’ll get plenty of ruminative or contemplative reflections out of that too.
The other best advice I’ve gotten is that when you want to write, read, preferably someone who lights you up or approaches subjects the way you do. But it can go the other way too – a pitch I’m writing has me reading Temple Grandin and while I appreciate where her incredibly Spartan prose comes from (in a sense) it’s like plain oatmeal most of the time and it doesn’t get me fired up for the written word.
Anyway beyond that, most of the time when I’m blocked from writing it’s because of some other anxiety that’s claiming my thought real estate. Get to a place where you can relax – if I can’t directly address something, for me that means physically going somewhere to write that’s new (or at least different) that’s free of reminders. Friends of mine who write fiction will go out and people watch, imagining the stories of the people around them. Stuff like that.
But yeah I think Mallory is both naturally creative and very conscious about harnessing ideas as they come to her. On several occasions you’ll see her just kind of shooting the shit on Twitter and then publish a piece on whatever comes out of that the next morning. Also, obviously, there are the running theme pieces.
Some people just have the workrate – Alana Massey started writing about the same time I did and she lived on freelance writing in New York City, which is completely bonkers, got writing jobs and just sold a book. She can do a lot of things I can’t but the biggest one is probably be completely unfazed by repeated, even consecutive rejection. I can’t imagine how much she must write if you include all the stuff that doesn’t get published. If you work slowly like I do, a rejected pitch could mean months without work.
I 100% support the microwave re-heating of one’s coffee.
Re-read everything you’ve written up til this point. Nod. Seems like enough work for now, proceed to the most favorable staring wall.
When I clicked on “read more” I was kinda hoping that there would be nothing on the list beyond number 1, not gonna lie.
I could swear to you it was in at least one of the books.
THABTOs: Two Heads Are Better Than One!
That was a good one!
The quote was from an interview with the writer/producer in 2010, so yeah I don't think that was actually in the show.
Yes! TCE! I work in environmental consulting now and every time I have to run TCE as a contaminant of concern I think of that episode.