My name is Thomas 'TomSka' Ridgewell ... and I have writers block
My YouTube channel has an audience of over 1,500,000 subscribers and I’m struggling to entertain them.
Since my creative partner passed away in March 2012 I haven’t been able to write entertaining dialogue between characters. I can still come up with ideas, jokes and narratives but I just can’t make them speak. If you follow my work, you may have noticed that almost every video released since last March has followed almost exactly the same writing structure; one that allows me to just execute jokes without actually having two characters interact with each other.
I need your help.
If you’re an aspiring/established comedy writer then I’d like to offer you the opportunity to get your words and your name out there and make a bit of cold hard cash while you’re at it.
On this blog I’ll be posting sketch and show premises in the hopes of finding a writer who can bring them to life. The briefs will range in detail from entire narrative structures and set jokes to just basic plot lines.
Start your engines, comedians.
Oh, and download Celtx too ;D
How To Overcome Writer's Block
Sit there for a few minutes, staring at your blank Microsoft page as the cursor clicks in painfully slow time against your anxious fingers, tense, curled above the keys. Try to think of a word, a phrase or a character that might compel you. Wait for the rush of thoughts that wind your mind, driving you—forcing you—to write. You fail. You don’t think of anything besides a few cheap clichés. Inhale and tell yourself that you will get something down on the page. Write a sentence. Maybe two. They’re shit. You stop. Tap anxiously against the desk. Wonder why you can’t find the words, especially when you are flooded with feeling. You decide not everything can be put into words, and you’re satisfied with that resolve for a few seconds of false security until your frustration overcomes you, and you know you just want to write something beautiful.
You think about how you want your words to intricately lace together into complex patterns of masterful designs and paint vivid images to instill in the minds and hearts of readers, but your words spew in coils of tangled masses, and when you try to touch them, you only deepen the knots. Take a deep breath. Get a glass of water. Step away from your laptop for a few minutes and talk to someone. Distract yourself. Forget about writing. When the day fades to black, lay in bed. Remember your unwritten words. Curse.
Roll out from beneath the covers, and stumble over to your laptop. Repeat the process. Finally, when you’re exhausted to a state of numbness, write. Write because you no longer filter your words, critique yourself or confine their freedom with the restraints of proper grammar or spelling. Don’t contemplate over which words you’re going to write next, over which verb you may have worn out with over-usage or switch your direction because your sentences have become redundant. Write because you know that revisions come later, you just need something to work with.
The bearing load of pressure to write well and descriptively lifts from your mind. Write the fresh and impulsive words. Let them scroll across the page. The once tangled thoughts slowly unravel themselves to create a delicate silhouette of words. Perhaps it’s not impressive to anybody else, but to you, to see your thoughts naked and pure, cracking fissures in the barrier of your tentative consciousness with bursts of passion, without dolling them up or altering them to suit the perceived taste of anybody else’s standards, is all too beautiful.
That’s where your story begins.
Hack Your Way out of Writer's Block according to Merlin Mann
43folders.com- Talk to a monkey - Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout.
- Do something important that’s very easy - Is there a small part of your project you could finish quickly that would move things forward?
- Try freewriting - Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?
- Take a walk - Get out of your writing brain for 10 minutes. Think about bunnies. Breathe.
- Take a shower; change clothes - Give yourself a truly clean start.
- Write from a persona - Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.
- Get away from the computer; Write someplace new - If you’ve been staring at the screen and nothing is happening, walk away. Shut down the computer. Take one pen and one notebook, and go somewhere new.
- Quit beating yourself up - You can’t create when you feel ass-whipped. Stop visualizing catastrophes, and focus on positive outcomes.
- Stretch - Maybe try vacuuming your lungs too.
- Add one ritual behavior - Get a glass of water exactly every 20 minutes. Do pushups. Eat a Tootsie Roll every paragraph. Add physical structure.
- Listen to new music - Try something instrumental and rhythmic that you’ve never heard before. Put it on repeat, then stop fiddling with iTunes until your draft is done.
- Write crap - Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.
- Unplug the router - Metafilter and Boing Boing aren’t helping you right now. Turn off the Interweb and close every application you don’t need. Consider creating a new user account on your computer with none of your familiar apps or configurations.
- Write the middle - Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.
- Do one chore - Sweep the floor or take out the recycling. Try something lightly physical to remind you that you know how to do things.
- Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.
- Work on the title - Quickly make up five distinctly different titles. Meditate on them. What bugs you about the one you like least?
- Write five words - Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.
