A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.
13. Overcoming writer’s block
Truly one of the most frustrating parts of writing. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it’s like your brain just turns off and nothing will come out. Or what does come out is complete, unadulterated crap. Either way, it can leave you feeling pretty useless.
My personal cure for writer’s block sounds a little dumb, but I swear it works…write fan fiction. No really! Fan fiction is great for writer’s block because the world, the characters, and all the important information is already created for you. All that’s left is to make something happen with all that information. Even better, take something that exists as other-than-written media (like tv shows, video games, etc) and write it out in novel form. It can be very interesting to use your imagination to flesh out visual media by writing it out in novel form, and it really gets the creative juices flowing. Writing a page or two of my Final Fantasy fan fiction (which is just a novelized telling of Final Fantasy III/VI) always gets me ready and able to move back to something original. 🙂
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I know people who wrote fan fiction, it wasn’tso much to overcome writer’s block (good idea by the way and you’re right about having the world and characters all set up for you) but, as the name fan implies, to keep the stories of their favourite characters going.
Some fan fiction writers went on to write ;professionally. I heard Australian writer, Kerry Greenwood say that she practiced her craft by re writing bodice rippers. She writes non fiction but is nest known for her crime fiction sseries set in 1920s Australia. The series has a lady detective called Phryne Fisher. Keep on writingthe fan fiction.
I also originally began writing fan fiction to keep beloved stories going. Some of the first fan fics I wrote were Harry Potter ones…before the sixth book had come out, I wrote my version of what I thought might happen. It was absolutely foolish, now that I look back at it, but it was a pleasant diversion, and a few people over at FanFiction.net even liked it. lol
In the end, I feel that writing is writing…there’s no such thing as a ‘waste of time’ when it comes to getting words on paper. 🙂
Tracey-Lynn the fan fiction writers I knew, way back when, wrote storties set in the original Star Trek Universe. They were desperate to keep things going, the series had been cancelled. Now that dates me, doesn’t it?
I agree that writing is writing. It’s all a learning curve, including (sometimes especially) fan fiction writing.