Getting back into writing?

Question

For three and a half months now I have had terrible writer's block and decided just to not think about it because I was getting frustrated. Now I want to start writing again, but my english class doesn't start until after winter and I am afraid my flow and descriptive manner (I felt that my style was finally coming along) and I will write short, choppy, sentences. I haven't tried yet because I am still planning. Also, I don't know where to start! Anyway where I could get back into novel writing? I am so lost and confused and I need to write!

Answer 1

Firstly, stay frosty -- your work requires calm and paitence, at least, and anxiety and fear only make more to overcome. Tell yourself that you are doing this, and writing is what you want to do.
Secondly, realize that it's a skill, and a skill requires practice (and again, paitence) to work when you need it to work.
Freewrite a lot. For five minutes (or whatever span you find comfortable), your pen maintains contacts with the paper and you write until your time is up. It's not so much what you write, but it's getting comfortable with the reality of sitting in one spot and calling on your mind to write, and get past your internal censor. You could write nonsense if you wanted...think of it as stretching out before exercising.
Try writing short stories, maybe even nanofiction before novels. Think of it as building a ship in a bottle, before building the ship on 1:1 scale...fleshing out your ideas.
As for writing, go to your bookshelf, see what you like to read.
So now you have an idea of the genre. Maybe borrow an opening line to get you going. Or if the work is a short story, the first and last sentence. You can rewrite those opening and closing lines later. It's about having a starting place, and ending point.
Come up with your own creative ideas. Interview a favorite character, borrow one character and stick him/her in another genre, or put yourself in the middle of Peter Rabbit, or War and Peace, or The Dunwich Horror.
Be exceedingly gentle to yourself in the first draft, no first draft, nothing to edit.
Realize and accept it may require a lot of drafts to get it to the point where you're ready to loosen your prose on an unsuspecting world. Plan to put in the time to put quality in your work.
As a previous poster said, there's no magic formula from a book. There's just acceptance of putting the time in to be good, and persistence, and love of the task, and hey, yourself, too. :)
Some books I've found helpful are _Writing With Power_ by Peter Elbow, and _Wild Mind_ by Natalie Goldberg. But don't substiute reading about writing for writing. Get in there and get dirty. Every day. Or write a 500 word essay about why you couldn't write that day. :)

Best of luck.

Answer 2

I completely feel you, I've been in ruts before, and with deadlines too, so you can imagine...

But the only thing to really get back in the swing of things is to sit in front of the paper (or the computer, or your favorite medium) and go. Even if your head is completely blank, even if what comes out sounds like you're whining about your day, keep writing. Eventually, you'll fall back into the groove, your style will appear again, and ideas will start flowing. The longer you sit around and avoid it, the harder it will be to return to the writing habit. I know it's kind of difficult, and confusing and frustrating and a lot of things, but I've learned that sulking about not being able to write just makes you more upset, and the only way to cure that is with words.

Good luck,

H.

Answer 3

there is no website or book that is going to tell you the secret to writing novels. You have to have it inside you to start with.

Start with an idea. Map it out in an outline. Make a story board for your characters, settings, outfits, etc. Ask yourself all kinds of questions about the story so you don't run into holes later on. Then, set hours or words that you HAVE to write a day. You don't have to use what you write that day, in fact you could write 4000 words a day for a couple of weeks and still not have something you want to use. But eventually it will start to come out and flow.

Answer 4

I'm having the exact same problem!

i agree with the above poster when she said to start mapping out and outlining the plot and characters. that is what I'm doing with a story i'm currently writing... i have about 10 pages of random information of about 22 characters (football team)... and the funny thing is is that i only intend for this to be a short story.

but if i were you, i wouldnt jump into novel writing just yet; build up instead. start by writing short stories. give yourself target word counts:

story #1- 500 words
story #2- 1000 words
story #3- 3000 words
etc. etc....

atleast those are the exercises my creative writing professor gave me to build up to write a novel.

good luck!!

Answer 5

Start with some writing prompts. Let something outside of you inspire you for a while until you feel ready to take over. Consider it like getting a car getting a jump start from a battery. If you would like one, write me and I will be happy to give you one. [e-mail]. Pax- C