Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with writer'sblock

Help me get a handle on this mass of writing!

sister nunchaku of love and mercy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:07:31 -0800

WriterFilter: I need help organizing this large, sprawling, and motley set of Word files into the first draft of a novel. I've written about 450 pages of what I hope will be a novel. I'm one of those people who has little trouble getting words onto the page, but organization and revision can be really difficult for me, especially with a longer piece of writing.

Right now the novel-to-be consists of dozens and dozens of separate files, each containing multiple scenes, single scenes, or even fragments of scenes. I also want to weave newspaper reports, interviews, and letters (all of which I've written) into the narrative.

In my mind I have a pretty good grasp of the content and flow of the whole. It's the process of organizing the mass of writing that has me cowed. I feel like I'm looking at a huge skein of yarn that I have to untangle before I can make use of it. I can see the beginning and the end of it, but the middle is a mass of knots.

Can you recommend ideas/techniques/strategies/software/how-to books to help me stitch this thing together into a draft? If I can do that, I think I can then revise it from beginning to end (as many times as necessary).

Bonus: fear of failure and the knowledge that this is going to be somewhat of a slog is paralyzing me to an extent, so I could use some suggestions to help with those issues, too.

FWIW I'm a Mac user and own the text editor Scrivener, which I think is awesome, though I haven't yet used it that much.

Thanks in advance, hive mind.

Help me let the muse in!

freshwater_pr0n — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:39:53 -0800

I have a huge mental block when it comes to writing songs that is the direct result of being ridiculed or sometimes even punished by my father when I was little. It's so bad that even when I try, a little voice in my head screams, "no, no, no!" and I just shut down. Freewriting is great, but I need to be able to ignore that voice even when I'm writing thoughtfully and paying attention to conventions like rhyme, rhythm and melody. I have plenty of ideas, but I need help learning how to get them out onto paper. Any ideas? And yes, I've seen some improvement by going to therapy, but you know, there's a time when you have to do stuff that's painful and hard even before you've morphed into a better, more confident version of yourself.

I'm writing again, but the song I just composed is not my song.

RobotHeart — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:03:49 -0800

Should I transcribe what I'm hearing in my head? How? (And should I see a shrink?) So, a song just fell into my head. It's fully developed with the exception of some of the lyrics missing. I've got the main vocal line, a background descant, a very full piano part, and some drums. Sometimes the background lyrics don't match the main lyrics.

It's a very nice song. I like it. The problem is, I'm pretty sure the aether misplaced it. It's clearly meant for Tori Amos's brain. In fact, it's Tori's voice singing it! It's built like a song of hers, too, in terms of the chords chosen and how the vocals drape across them -- maybe a kissing cousin of Tear in your Hand.

It would not surprise me too much if tomorrow some of her people banged on my door and threatened me for stealing the song already on the way to her. (Okay, yes it would. But you see where I'm going with this.)

I frequently have bits of music I have composed just pop up in my head, but I'm always the one singing, and it doesn't seem so derivative. But I never seem to be able to finish those.

Three questions:
1) If I wanted to try and transcribe what I'm hearing, I'd need a quicker way to write the music down. I could run to a store nearby for paper pre-lined with music staves, but is there a way of doing it digitally? I'd like to create a JPG or GIF of some sheet music.

2) Is my writer's block over, or has it just begun, if I'm writing someone else's song?

3) Given all of the above: do I need to see a shrink? ::toothy grin::