self-help

so, to go along with my last blog, and this weird ‘let’s talk about feelings and stuff.’ Thing I got going on. -for real don’t know where this is coming from. –

I thought that today we would talk about something that most people writers and non-writers a like feel at one point or another in their lives…or to be more realistic, all. Of. the. time. Self-doubt and anxiety.

These makes you feel alone, it makes you doubt not only what you can do but yourself as a person.

If this has happened to you, I hope that if you take anything out of this blog is that you are not alone. On that note I hope you enjoy.

Every writer has voices in their head. It’s how we’re able to write, It’s how we make the magic happen. however sometimes the voices tell you things, these kinds of voices whispers into your ear until they over take your thoughts and soon it’s the only voice in your head.

it speaks louder. Until it’s screaming at you. Things like ‘this sucks.’

‘no one is going to want to read this.’

Soon it even turns on you. ‘who would want to read what you wrote?’

‘this is worthless, you’re worthless.’

This goes on. until you are unable to see yourself in any other light. you start to feel like maybe, this is true.

It builds in your head, a deafening ringing that causes chaos in the deep workings of your mind, making your head feel two sizes smaller but your brain ten times bigger.

A building pressure that spreads to your throat making it hard to breath. Taking a deep breathe seems so out of the realm possibly. something that was once so easy, something that people around you do like it’s nothing, is something that you begin to struggle with. you struggle with basic human needs.

Soon the choking feeling turns into ropes that knot your stomach. Even without the choking feeling, the ropes and knots make it impossible to eat. And standing only makes it worst. The only thing it seems help is curl up into a small ball, to reflect how you feel.

The pressure pulls down onto your shoulders, weighting down on you, like if you were on the bottom of the sea. The weight wears on your body. Your knees, hips, shoulders, every nook and cranny. It pushes you down and makes you feel ten inches shorter.

When you’re busy with school, work, hobbies, family time or whatever. The voices are still, under the busyness of work, it’s the farthest from your mind as you study for that big exam. It’s quiet and calm as the smiles and laughter of friends and family drown it out.

But the moment you stop, the moment you try to sit and pour your blood, sweat and tears onto paper. The voices scream and ring at you as you try to break a piece of your soul to share with the world.

And the worst part is that because of those voices you are unable to talk about the dark sea that you are swimming through. You watch as the world around you. The people that you know and love look like they are floating on clouds, while you have rocks tried to your feet.

Soon, you start to avoid everything that is causing you to stress and panic, and writing has fallen over to the way side.

Before you wouldn’t think about going even an hour without writing. But under the lock of this paralyzing force, you go hours, days. Hell, maybe even weeks without picking up a pen. Or tapping words out.

But that doesn’t stop the voices, it only helps quiets them for a moment. But it doesn’t last long.

At night you are left with only the voices. You toss and turn, unable to sleep but you don’t have the energy to do anything but lay there.

So, there are you, lying in bed as the events of the day plays back in your mind. All the things you would have said or done differently,

It plays all the things you may or may not have fucked up. Things that shouldn’t matter, suddenly feel like 1000 bricks on your back. grinding you down to nothing.

Nothing seems to help, you no longer have a voice in your head, only these new ones are there. that break you down. Nothing seems to be able to stop it. you fester on everything with no hope of ending the feelings or sleeping.

you don’t know when it started but you soon go on auto pilot, going through the day feeling nothing at all but the black cloud over you.

Fake smiles and laughs are getting you through your day time life. night time is spent in solitude, with no motivation other than staring at the wall. Eating is throw at of the window, and you can’t even think about writing.

This takes days, months. Years maybe it’s something that’s been with for most of your live.

The scary thing is You don’t see yourself get to this point. one day you’re fine and then the next you’re fighting with yourself to get out of bed.

Writers live in a world of feelings and what ifs but in this kind of state, your trapped in a purgatory of feeling too much and not enough at the same time. A contend war raging inside of your chest. and you drown in the things that could happen and things that would never happen in a billion years.

It’s hard to break away from this, it’s something that will follow you for the rest of your life, you go through spells where you can break away from the dark. Getting to a point where you can write and live without worrying. With the sun shining against your skin, a sensation you aren’t used to feeling, like you’re normal for once.

But then, after a while, the storm clouds come back. Looming over you, bringing the darkness with it.

How do you fight it? How does one break away from the clouds and get to the sun when the world is so dark? Well, that’s different for everyone. Different reasons to walk through the dark to get to the sun. but something that helps? Writing. Bearing everything to the world.

Something that was part of the problem, being part of what saves you? Crazy talk I know.

but writing is a part of you, it’s in your DNA, it’s build inside every cell of your being. At some point it made you happy, even if it isn’t at the moment.

Writing, hell, anything that you like that might bring you happiness. All of those things are like a flashlight when the sun goes down. Sometimes the batteries are low and flicker. But other times they shine bright, splitting the darkness in two.

Doing the things you love. Being with the people you love. These are somethings to help, but if you really can’t pull out of the dark then it’s best to talk to a doctor. Or reach out to someone.

Because no one should spend their days, feeling the way that you do when you’re trapped in self-doubt, depression and anxiety. And you are so much better than the way these things make you feel.

Well there you have it lovable kiddos. That’s enough feeling sharing for one day.

Until next time!

Writers are weird creatures, (sorry but it’s true.) we pull not only totally made up people out of thin air. but lands, worlds and monster. even now I’m pulling a whole blog out of nothing, out of my brain and out with my fingertips. It’s great and awesome. Writers are a cool group of people. Go us!

But that doesn’t mean that it’s all that easy, anyone that has ever had to do a paper for school understands the dreadful feeling of sitting down and staring at a blank page for hours and getting nothing done.

And no, it’s not because you are getting distracted from the internet (well mostly.) and it’s not because you’re not good at writing (not by a long shot.) no, It’s writers block. it happens to the best of us.

If anyone saw how I wrote anything, wither it’s a blog post, something from my WIP, or even a tweet would see that 90% of the time me working looks like this.

WHAT AM I DOING?

WHAT AM I TYPING?

WHAT ARE THESE WORDS?

WHY IS THIS SO AWFUL?

WHY I AM DOING THIS?!?!

Pretty much over and over until I get my stuff together.

So for the times that the voices in your head don’t want to talk to you, or if the fog covering that new and wonderful place won’t show themselves to you, or the monsters are hiding in their dark caves. Well then maybe some of these tricks will help being them out in the opening.

Change your writing space.

you know the ins and outs. You have seen that same spot on the floor, or that same chip on your desk (if you have one.) the cup that might have been sitting there for days. You have seen all that stuff a billion times now.

you spend hours in there, sometimes days at a time, you can close your eyes and picture it too vividly that you don’t even have to be in there. and that’s just boring to us creative people. It doesn’t make our minds run excited as much. So spacing out starts to happens, boredom sets in and if you a phone or a computer with you, the internet is calling for you to watch cute animal videos or taking quizzes about type of bread you are, based on your star sigh.

And if your writing space is at your home office, a working office, there’s even more to keep your mind off of writing,

Dishes and laundry are piling up, you should be trying to get that great deal for the office, make your boss proud. You’re at the office so you should be working, not staring at a blank page! The kids want you to play with them, the list goes on and on it’s hard to just only think about writing and nothing else.

Now as much as I think it is importation to find your space, if you find that any of this is happening to you then you should change it up a little.

go out to a coffee shop, go sit in a park, go somewhere you don’t normally write and just look around.

There’s probably a lot of people, a lot of stuff going on, let your mind try and posses all that information and get your mind running.

Or if you already write in that kind of setting to begin with then maybe there’s too much going on for you to settle your mind. It could be just overloading your senses too much, rather in stimulating it.

so try going to a very quiet place, try and clear your mind, let it breath and do its thing.

Like for me, I write in a space with a lot of noise going on, but I’m writing this blog, sitting on the floor of my best friends’ house at 2 in the morning with only the sound of my keyboard.

I always find that I get more work done here or when I’m at one of my sibling’s houses I find that the words come out easy because there’s less things that make my mind want to wander away.

Even changing small things, like what you drink, eat, use to light the space, what you use to jog down the words will also help this problem.

Go back through and edit what you already have.

Now, I know that a lot of writers are against doing this but bear with me here.

I’ll touch on this much, much further on a different blog, but for now I will state I am so far on the band wagon for this I’m pretty much driving it.

Editing when you have writers block is great way to stay productive while in the endless desert that is writers block. You stay well versed into the world of your project, and its lore and magic or any of the sort. Instead of spending more and more time away from the world, and then have to reintroduce yourself to the world that you had made.

You can also save time while editing bad grammar and awkward sentences while you can’t think of anything new to write. making a lot less work for yourself in the long run.

You can fix any plot holes that might have popped out now that you might not have noticed before.

showing all the feelings and in tenseness through well place setting rather than just telling your readers why we should feel anything towards your written baby.

and make sure that any foreshadowing that you put in, are hiding in plain sight. And get new ideas or develop other ones that might have only begin to bud.

Just write random stuff.

So, my little intro wasn’t just me being funny (well okay a little,) when writers block hits me, I just start randomly typing. Anything, any thought that pops in my head.

I writer my feelings, I write about the weather, sometimes I just put on a movie or TV show and write the words along as the speak.

Whatever to keep my hands moving and my mind thinking.

Also, a lot of times writers block is triggered or even a directly caused by self-doubt and writing any bad feelings or doubts you may have, helps get it out of your system, then going back to the kick ass writer that you are.

Not only that but if you just stop writing for days, weeks, months whenever you hit wall is more damaging then doing you any good. Writing is like a muscle, if you stop using it, then it will get weaker and weaker.

So, it’s a lot better to type or write ‘I suck.’ Over and over for five pages then to walk always and might never pick it back up.

I think that one of the worst things as a writer you can do is just stop and wait for inspiration to come to you, I’ve been guilt of this too, I think at some points all writers are. but that old saying goes that if you wait around for inspiration to hit you then you’ll never be able to write.

So even if you are tired, or can’t think of something. Or depressed or anything of the sort, just write. Not only will you most likely feel better but you might end up with something great. It keeps your mind forced on something other than self-doubt, pity, sadness or whatever wants to take away your voice.

And if it isn’t great the first time around well, that’s what editing is for.

Knowing when it’s just not working.

If writer’s block is happening every time you are sitting down to write in a current project, every time it makes you want to pull your hair out or you stare at blank pages for weeks on end, cry your eyes out or feeling less of your ability then it’s not you, it’s the project that you are working on.

sometimes it just doesn’t work, about the idea needs to be reworked,

maybe the theme or topic just isn’t as exciting as you thought it was.

Maybe the characters just plain blow.

You can’t find the rhyme that means what you want it too.

Or that post feel like meaninglessly words just to have something.

If deep down, you feel that it’s not working then there’s no shame in scrapping it, and moving onto something different. It doesn’t make you a failure to move on to something that you care a lot more about.

Because if you write (or make, do any of the sort.) something that you don’t care about, not only will everyone know that you don’t care. But it makes mockery of what you were trying to say in the first place.

So, there you have it lovable kiddos, hopefully these will help you out next time that the muses feel like calling in sick.

have a good way to get passed writer’s block? let me know! Via comments/Twitter/Facebook/whatnot

Until next time.

self-doubt and anxiety: a writer’s burden.

when the muses don’t want to speak.