Do you ever feel as if you've lost it?

[Sighlent]

You know, that chaotic spark that once made you so much more confident about what you wrote? It's just lately I can't seem to make ass or ends about what I'm writing and if I can't understand it than I sure as hell doubt someone else can.

-Sighs-

Words of advice? Other than going on a vacation. Lol @ Squalleh. XD

[Bird of Hermes]

Ask someone else to read your writing and let you know what they think. It's usually never as horrible as you think.

[Sighlent]

Maybe, but it's hard to do that whenever all you have is notes and a jumbled notion of what you want to occur in the piece that you are presenting. :S

[Kalon Ordona II]

Write it all out in different mediums. Type it, hand-write it, draw pictures of it. Live it, know it. The more time you spend with your ideas -- not just in thought, but in action -- the more they'll bleed through into the real world.

I don't know if that helps, but it's a shot. In general, the better you know your ideas, the better you'll be able to communicate them -- and the more confident you will be about doing just that.

Write them in pencil, write them in marker, make them into poems. Maybe do some research...? The more angles you approach what you want to say, the better you'll be able to say it.

Not that I've tried any of this stuff myself, really. At least not yet. ^^ So, if it works for you, no need to thank me. Different things work for different people, I'm sure.

Keep at it!

[Buzzwulf]

I agree with Kalon. I always, ALWAYS, write out everything I post on paper before typing it up, and it worked wonders for my confidence. Not only that, but studies show that hand-written works tend to simply be better quality for whatever reason... though that's an extreme generalization.

Also, research, research, research. The more you know about the topic, the more you can make up when something similar to that topic comes along. It's a horrible way to think about it, but it's true. You don't need to know everything, you just need to know a lot about a few really, really general things.

Something I do every once in a while that really helps me is act my characters out. When I've made a post that I think is particularly good, I'll pick it up and read it like a script. If some of the line make you feel silly, chances are your character would also feel sort of silly saying or doing them. This has the added bonus of being really good for proofing- you'll find more mistakes if you read your material out loud.

But that's me. Everyone writes differently. I can't write with music, it distracts me. My best friend has to have some sort of screaming metal in the background or he can't type a word. I don't like any light but what I'm writing by, the isolation cuts down on distractions for me and makes it easier for me to think. I come up with my best ideas just as I'm closing my eyes to fall asleep. There's really not a catch-all way for people to write, just take what works best for you and run with it.

[Sunwolf007]

Sometimes when I feel as though I can't write very well at all I watch a terrible movie. Just work with me on this one I call it my theory of seeing what not to do. Then I think on how I would have done it so that it would have been made better. For whatever reason this critique style helps me when I try to construct a good plot. Like how to insert hints at what is going to happen next. For instance how in a TV crime drama like Castle when Beckett mentions someone running down financial records on a suspect you know that it will come back later in the show in some fashion. If you watch a horrible movie you see scenes constructed that should have mentioned something earlier but didn't so it feel as if it was out of nowhere.

Plus when watching a movie you hear the dialogue (as mentioned before it is always a great idea to read your work to yourself I hate doing it but I catch mistakes when I do) and notice that terrible actors don't know how to make their voice's and facial expressions match what happens later. Like how in a movie the mass murder is one of the 5 people you met in the beginning of the film but didn't realize it because the actor couldn't sound menacing properly and just sounds like a punk. Or how a person's background would have no reason for them to know how to hook up a computer from parts lying about.

These are just a few specific examples but what you do as you watch this terrible movie is you see exactly what not to do. Then you can look for it in your own writing while proofing or constructing that writing. Research is key as mentioned before you want to know as much as you can so when you make something up it feels right to someone who knows less than you do. Another thing I do when I am blocked is watch a movie or TV show that I really like and is really good to see what they did well. Kind of the reverse of what I just laid out. This way you know what to look for in your writing and how to construct it while writing. Anyway that is my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

[JohnChristopher]

This happened to me on the first ever book/story/novel I was planning on writing. It wasn't the first story I had ever written, but I got very intense with it...and then all of a sudden it fell apart. I regained my thoughts a few months later and tried again, but it didn't work. I still have all the notes and first draft and such but it seems like five different stories and I don't feel the want to write it anymore.

The problem is that if you take a break from something and you're like me, you have to remember to get back into it so that you can get the motivation back and the actual want. Since the story I am currently writing is on my flash drive and that is in my school stuff, I am not working on my story because of laziness.

My recommendation: to start over. Write the first chapter/section again and you'll get back into the mood and then you can rewrite the rest of the chapters/sections of your story the way you want to write them now, after you lost interest, or continue where you left off. The story could change considerably or change the slightest bit, but you will (probably?) get your determination back.

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