Ernest Worthing is a user on octodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

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

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.

@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.

Ernest Worthing @ejworthing

@h @mayel

I only write nonfiction. Fiction writing sounds like a different process.

For me, scattered bits are sometimes a necessary first step.

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@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)