In the previous post, I left off at a point where I essentially admitted to annotating and highlighting my books for research and as a pastime. That's not the worst thing that I do for fun. It's not like I casually collect dolls or anything hahahahhaa!
Ahem. Anyway, research plays a huge part in writing. Sure, it's an imaginative activity but you should never allow it to be purely imaginative. There needs to be that nice balance between imagination and real life. Why would anybody want to experience anything you create if they can't make even a tidbit of sense out of it? There needs to be a degree of relatability, so you incorporate your own life experiences along with the detailed and thorough research that you have conducted for your end piece.
That's about the initial writing stages, anyway. That part is, in theory, straightforward enough. It's just getting yourself to sit down and do it. There is absolutely no such thing as 'writer's block', a wise high school teacher, Keith McManus, once informed me, 'only laziness'. He explained that staring at a blank screen isn't productive, and that you should just write; even if what you're writing is crap. But guess what? Upon writing this crap, you have overcome the initial and most difficult part of the writing process; writing from nothing. From here, you can now read over your work and edit it appropriately. That's why we constantly re-draft our work, making it better and better each time, refining every minute detail to the best of our abilities.
Admittedly, I still do this; staring at a blank screen. I don't have the gall to call it writer's block, I swallow my pride and make myself aware that I haven't written anything because I fear my lack of ability in this area. I fear that I'm going to cringe long and hard at what I've written and so will other people if I allow them to see it.
Procrastination is an easy escape route to avoid this, but it isn't good. Writer's block does not exist. There is a fear of yourself that needs to be overthrown, and only you can do that. The best advice for anxiety is to just do it, and it applies here as well. Yes, it's a little counterproductive to tell an anxious person to 'just get over it' because, let's face, they're sick of telling themselves that, and they know fair and well that their fear is irrational. I tell myself this all the time.
However.
I have used the 'just do it' method and, by God, does it work and you get such a sense of achievement from it. You need to get over the initial lack of confidence in yourself because, after all, it's incredibly rare for the first draft that you crank out to be an utter masterpiece. You need to work on it and that is a natural part of the process of writing. You take only a small degree of decision making abilities of an inebriated person and just go for it. Note the key phrase 'a small degree'; you don't want to be too rash!
This view point is supported by the cause that NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in the month of November, exists for. It challenges people, no matter what they do in life, to write a 50,000 word novella. There was also, until recent years, a script writing version known as Script Frenzy April, but now it has been since smooshed in with NaNo. They encourage people to just write and write and keep on writing; there will be room for editing later.
You need to give yourself time for your research, what your subject is, your theme and your sub-theme, and how you're going to go about it. This is an absolutely fascinating progression to me, and I want to go forth with it in particular. You draw information from what people tell you, your own life experiences to add your own touch of reality and how view it, and thorough research. This is when it starts getting really damn fun.
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