I thought this was the best place for putting this up, but if it belongs somewhere else, feel free to move it. Basically, I suddenly found myself really super unable to write anything. I finished a really long project (100k novel/fic I've worked on and off on for five years). Now that it's done, I'm letting it rest for a few months before I edit it and try to get it published. In the mean time I've been trying to work on some smaller things including applications for Odyssey and Clarion summer writer's workshops. And it just. hasn't been working. So what do you all do when confronted with creative block (this is also applicable to drawing and crafting I think)? I'm trying to write without worrying about quality, but I'm having a hard time accomplishing that :(
When I get artblock I usually just do stick figure gestures, because sooner or later it'll stimulate me enough that I want to go back and actually develop one of them into something. I'm not sure how well that translates to writing, but you could try word games? It'd be harder to do alone (and we used to do them in big groups of like five to ten people on neopets) but you pick a word and write a short snippet for it (usually something that embodies it, not necessarily something that has to use the word itself) in a small timeframe. I think 7-20 minutes was the standard when I did it (because more people could 'win' and judge the next round that way) but I think if you took the basic idea you could do flash rounds of writing by yourself? I mean, ideally there'd be a big group of people wanting to play the game with you, but I think the system works for singular writing too. I don't know if that kind of pressure will help or hinder, but I know giving myself short timeframes keeps me from obsessing about quality with things.
I try to find a different creative task. I crochet or draw when I get writer's block and write when I can't find a stitch to get this stupid yarn to stripe properly and so on.
