I sat down with the intention of writing something witty, clever and original; but I cannot think of anything remotely witty, clever and original. Not right now anyway. To anyone who has had to write something, for whatever reason this is not an unusual happening.
Whether it is an academic paper, article for a newspaper or website or even a short text for a weekly blog, writer's block can strike. I'm sure that you realise that when I sit down to write my blog for every Friday I don't have a plan of what I'm going to talk about, I just sit down and write whatever I feel like writing about.
Usually I don't have any problems with finding a topic and just going for it. I do a little research, maybe read a few articles and off I go, writing ill informed rants about anything and everything. This week is somewhat different.
It isn't like I have things on my mind which are stopping me, after a number of weeks of poor time management where my PhD work has been neglected and ignored I now have the situation under control. Getting cracking with lots of work this week, I've written two introductions for research papers, started building a website for my research data collection and even updated my academic website for the first time in a long time. So surely I should be in a better position to write something than in previous weeks.
Wait, I'm blogging right now! Maybe I don't have writer's block after all but it won't stop me talking about it.
The problem I find is that sometimes I find it hard to decide on what to write about, there are almost limitless possibilities and topics to cover. I want to keep it quite general as I don't want to put people off by talking about my research every week or blogging about statistical analysis of data sets. I like to discuss topics which everyone will relate to and enjoy (with the exception of the week I wrote about golf, I enjoy it but I understand other people don't).
Another thing which you may not know is I write articles for this blog which never quite make it, I wrote about politics a few weeks back but it is still in the drafts folder, I don't think it will ever make it into the blog, although it is nice to have a backup. After the week I was going to Essex on a Friday I rushed to get something out, so now I write the blog about a week in advance, for example I'm about to go to get a haircut but by the time this is online the haircut will be a week old. I think I've kind of left my topic slightly now, I'll try to get back...
I have been experiencing musical writers block for over a year now, I simply can't write any music which I enjoy. I write something, play it, enjoy it for a minute or two then delete the lot and tell myself it was crap and I'd be better off leaving it for today. I don't know how to solve it, I think it started when I lost some classical compositions I'd been working on (folder deleted in a hard-drive clear out), I lost all interest in writing then. I didn't even try to write anything for months and now I can't get back into it. Thankfully I have been able to put my energy into writing words not music, the same thing happened with drawing and painting but I put that down to the fact that I draw best when I'm bored, ergo if I find myself in a boring job or waiting in the car for someone I'll happily draw but I shouldn't try to draw.
I also think I'm quite easily distracted which I sometimes interpret as writer's block when in actual fact it is just distraction. For example, whilst writing this I have the cricket on, England are 144 for 3 against Bangladesh. I keep stopping writing to watch.
I think I've done quite well considering I thought I had writer's block... Although the quality of what is written may be a little sketchy.
Quote of the week!
"Do you want to buy a battleship?"