I'm really struggling with #writing and #blogging, if anybody has stumbled upon an extended writing block (I assume most people who write have at some point) I'd love to read about their experiences and how they transcended that situation, incorporating writing as a healthy habit, abolishing the vicarious struggle against a blank page.
Any pointers and suggestions are welcome. Thank you.
@h maybe you're missing the right tool? https://alternativeto.net/software/scrivener/
@h Writer's block, in my experience, is about not having enough inputs. Read more!
@dajbelshaw In my case, that's not the case :-) But thanks for the suggestion.
@h OK, I have lots more tips, but here's just three:
1. Write the second paragraph first.
2. Write it in someone else's voice.
3. Use voice-to-text (it's a completely different experience)
🙃
@dajbelshaw Now we're talking, heheh. I'll try that, see how that works. Thank you.
@h I used to write. I like to tell stories. I like to share knowledge.
When I write I don't use it as a way I tell something to someone. I'm telling something to myself. I'm reinforcing my own knowledge (and often I'm threatening it and making me think about it again).
When I consider writing something like that it helps me with the motivational part.
When I have problems with the starting point I talk with myself about the idea until I find a good way to represent it. It's like discussing.
@ekaitz_zarraga I like to share knowledge. I'm not a natural-born storyteller.
It's a handicap, i may never become a complete author, but I believe I can make up for it making a good logical case following a more methodical approach, and borrowing from my experience with visual media. I'm a lot better at using images to tell stories, I need to find out how to translate that into words on a written page.
Thanks for the tips.
@h you can bring some images to the table, create a map from that and then start writing.
That would help you organize your ideas and introduce some context.
First images, second words.
Just describe the landscape what you see.
@ekaitz_zarraga Interesting you bring that up.
I'm taking a look at Scapple, a twin tool of sorts made by the same guys who develop Scrivener.
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview
Free alternatives to Scrapple may help. We'll see.
When I am struggling to finish writing something for public consumption, it helps to write something on the same topic that will be for my eyes only.
Try writing by hand on paper. Or try using a piece of software you won't use for the finished product. (I finish things in LibreOffice or Word. I often start in Emacs.)
Try getting an idea out of your head without worrying about style or grammar. Outline or use incomplete sentences.
If you don't know what you want to say, try writing something about why you don't know what you want to say.
@ejworthing That's a good one hehehe
@ejworthing I'm already doing a lot of raw idea collection in plain text (vim here, though :-)
I also use LibreOffice, and I'm exploring alternatives to Scrivener that were suggested by @mayel.
Writing on paper has helped to some degree (for fiction, mainly), but it's also incredibly slow when you're at your maximum productivity.
I'll be trying more braindumps, but so far that has only resulted in a greater number of scattered bits, and no actual writing.
Thanks for your help anyway.
@ejworthing @mayel That's understood. Part of the trouble I'm having is precisely bridging the two aspects. Too many scattered bits, and no bridge between them and the island of actually writing.
It seems as if I need an intermediate form, like a loose structure in the way @ekaitz_zarraga@mastodon.socia suggested, or something that I may be exploring with Scapple (and/or its free alternatives)
@h Why are you writing? Are you blogging because you have a blog?
@h Most of my writing is unpublished, in a single .md file. I don't consider it fit for publication; it's for personal reflection.
I recently wrote a eulogy for my grandmother, which was a different experience because of the well-defined audience. That produced a very different motivation and set of standards relative to writing a blog post or personal journal entry. I still did my usual analytical thing, but it was easier.
My guess: an anonymous audience cannot be satisfied.
@kdsch Is this personal anecdote illustrative of something else you're trying to say?
Like, I should define what's my audience?
If that's the case, I kinda did that here, describing the writing formats I intend to deliver.
@h I'm missing how the writing format defines the audience. You might be writing a blog and a book, but what can you say about readers? What do they know? What do they want to hear? Does the software solve a problem of theirs?
@kdsch If I were to define an audience in the terms you propose, the audience wouldn't be well-served.
Some are people interested in hypermedia matters, scholars and practitioners from a broad spectrum of philosophies. Some of them are politically inclined towards the politically social libertarian side of things. A few are capitalists. Some are casual readers infatuated with the www. Some are p2p people. Some aren't.
The "segmentation" of "my market" doesn't work that way.
There's an aspect that is important for me, in this "ideal reader" concept, that I haven't mentioned, because it is more intimate and emotional. The "ideal reader" as I picture it is a the person who would have the most interest, charity, openness to your discourse. Having this ideal reader in your mind serves as an utopian "best case scenario" or mirror revealing what you really stand for. Like an asymptote of the actual responses you hope get.
So your point (i. e about "what do they want to hear" or "things they are looking for") is well taken. When you have an idea of this, the text is practically written already. What speaks to the writer's block syndrome, IMHO, is more this experience than you can't speak because there's no one, on an existential level, to speak to. That's my impression anyways.
@h I'm not much of a writer (especially starting with a blank page), and actually find editing much easier, so when I want/need to write something it helps if I start putting some things down, even if it's just a list of topics and keywords, braindumped ideas, and some small relevant tidbits copy/pasted from Wikipedia or wherever. And then I start expanding/editing those things, adding context and glue to make it flow, etc...