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Yeah… no. It isn’t as simple as writing down any idea you have magically becoming a story. I really don’t like the framing here. To be blunt, this person is be

Yeah… no. It isn’t as simple as writing down any idea you have magically becoming a story. I really don’t like the framing here. To be blunt, this person is being a jerk. For a real discussion on the process of making art of any kind, I recommend reading [Art and Fear](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaking/dp/0961454733 https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaki...) by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s a lot more insightful about human nature than calling people lairs for falling into the same patterns that have existed since Art has existed. I’m a fan of the audio book but definitely listen to the sample first. The narrator may not be to your taste.

mbrodersen 5y ago
The author is writing his truth. That doesn’t make him a jerk. Do you think everybody who says something you disagree with is a jerk?
cyber_kinetist 5y ago
The article is not talking about how to write better though, it's about why people have trouble starting to write in the first place. From the article: "By contrast, when you’re in touch with your honest aesthetic/spiritual/material/intellectual priorities, writing is pretty easy. I don’t mean, like, that it’s easy to write immortal masterpieces—there are heights of aesthetic perfection that can only be reached when the right material meets a well-trained set of hands. But writing a decent enough first draft—something to fuck around with until it’s readable—should be fairly simple. Sure, it takes discipline to open the document and begin typing rather than continuing to scroll Twitter. But once you begin, it shouldn’t feel like trying to squeeze champagne out of wrought iron. It should feel like opening a floodgate—whether that results in a furious swell or an amiable trickle."
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  It isn’t that simple. The blog presents what the author thinks everyone’s problem is. The problem they present is one facet of a much larger topic.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    It is a major facet, though. And the article is kind, because it encourages people to be true to themselves and not feel externally pressured (both from other people and from their less than authentic selves) to write on things they don't care about.
- intrepidhero 5y ago
  There is probably a grain of truth in there but if a lot of people think a thing (ex. writing) is hard and someone is saying, "Actually it's easy if you do this one thing", I feel pretty confident they're selling something.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    I’m going to be a little more charitable and assume that the author found writing easy once they got over their roadblocks. Assuming everyone faces the problems the same way you did is a common failing of humanity. This is why most advice fails to work. The advice was right for a specific person at a specific time when they where ready to hear it and able to understand it.
  - zopa 5y ago
    There's a lot to be said for a grain of truth and a magnifying glass. Mostly I don't want the whole beach all at once. Yes, of course, not all writer's block and it's not the whole picture and it won't work for everyone, and on and on. Everything is always more complicated; we knew that going in, that's a given. It's a ~1000-word article; it can't be the whole truth of anything. But I'd rather read one clear insightful treatment of some of the truth than a mess of qualifiers.
ajkjk 5y ago
I mostly disagree; I think the article hits it at something pretty true. Granted, "liar" is a bit of a strong term. But insincere -- definitely. In particular I think the 'lie' most people who are trying to write but can't get it to happen are telling themselves is that they _want_ to be writing at all. Most of the time people want to want to write, but they don't actually _want to_. If you truly want to do something, it happens effortlessly (barring some problematic anxiety getting in the way). The rest of the time, you just wish you wanted to. The distinction between "wanting to do something" and "wanting to want to do something" has been very helpful in my life. Particularly because it helps me not feel bad when I can't get myself to do something. Usually giving up on wanting-to-want and doing something else for a while eventually leads to the actual desire coming back, once it's freed from the anxiety of trying to force it.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  > The distinction between "wanting to do something" and "wanting to want to do something" has been very helpful in my life. That concept been helpful for me too. The problem I have with this article is it’s presentation is not very helpful to people who don’t already understand the underlaying ideas behind the motivation to write the article.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  I think "wanting to want" is part of it, but there's something more fundamental: wanting to do something vs wanting to have done something in the future. I want to stay in bed, binge Netflix, play video games and read books all day. One year from now, that's not what I want to have spent the past year doing. I don't know about everybody else, but this is an underlying tension in my life.
  - ajkjk 5y ago
    I think everyone has that. For what it's worth it seems like the path to _not_ doing that involves being fine with doing it. Somehow the 'wanting to have done something this year' causes a sort of anxiety that makes one not do things. I find that when I can release the feeling that I ought to be doing something, or that I'm failing or doing the wrong thing, I... start to desire to do things again and end up happier with the result. This backwards logic underlies all of 'depression', in my experience. If you have a neurotic need to be something or have done something, that neurotic need can only manifest in 'symbolic action' -- like visibly starting work (only to give up shortly thereafter), or performatively talking about how you're doing something or planning to do it. But neurotic motivation isn't _actual_ motivation. It's only purpose, I think, biologically must be to get you 'near' what you feel like you should be doing, in hopes that that causes it to happen somehow. When you have a neurotic motivation that's at odds with who you are, or that you don't know how to immediately act on, it causes you to sort of .. shut down. Because you can't immediately become who you 'wish you were', you just do ... nothing, operating in the lowest-energy state, chasing immediate rewards like eating, doing things that are suggested to you, and binging the highest-dopamine rewards like video games or netflix. When I've realized this about particular 'needs' in the past, I've been able to see the need dissipate, and I suddenly feel much free-r to actually be myself and do things I want to do, which confusingly is more effective at getting to whoever you actually wanted to be anyway. The key is not _needing_ to be that person. If you feel bad about not being something, it just, like, breaks everything in your brain. In the case of TFA: if you feel like you need to be a writer, you sit down and think about writing, but your creativity is broken because you're just operating neurotically. So quit it; don't try to write until you _want_ to. Related: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/ https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob... which is the article that initially got me thinking in ways that got rid of some of the 'neurotic needs' that were making it hard to be freely motivated. Although it feels like I keep finding new problems of this sort, I've definitely fixed a few of them in the past, and somehow once fixed they seem to _stay_ fixed.

mbrodersen 5y ago

The author is writing his truth. That doesn’t make him a jerk. Do you think everybody who says something you disagree with is a jerk?

cyber_kinetist 5y ago

The article is not talking about how to write better though, it's about why people have trouble starting to write in the first place. From the article: "By contrast, when you’re in touch with your honest aesthetic/spiritual/material/intellectual priorities, writing is pretty easy. I don’t mean, like, that it’s easy to write immortal masterpieces—there are heights of aesthetic perfection that can only be reached when the right material meets a well-trained set of hands. But writing a decent enough first draft—something to fuck around with until it’s readable—should be fairly simple. Sure, it takes discipline to open the document and begin typing rather than continuing to scroll Twitter. But once you begin, it shouldn’t feel like trying to squeeze champagne out of wrought iron. It should feel like opening a floodgate—whether that results in a furious swell or an amiable trickle."

kayodelycaon 5y ago
It isn’t that simple. The blog presents what the author thinks everyone’s problem is. The problem they present is one facet of a much larger topic.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  It is a major facet, though. And the article is kind, because it encourages people to be true to themselves and not feel externally pressured (both from other people and from their less than authentic selves) to write on things they don't care about.
intrepidhero 5y ago
There is probably a grain of truth in there but if a lot of people think a thing (ex. writing) is hard and someone is saying, "Actually it's easy if you do this one thing", I feel pretty confident they're selling something.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I’m going to be a little more charitable and assume that the author found writing easy once they got over their roadblocks. Assuming everyone faces the problems the same way you did is a common failing of humanity. This is why most advice fails to work. The advice was right for a specific person at a specific time when they where ready to hear it and able to understand it.
- zopa 5y ago
  There's a lot to be said for a grain of truth and a magnifying glass. Mostly I don't want the whole beach all at once. Yes, of course, not all writer's block and it's not the whole picture and it won't work for everyone, and on and on. Everything is always more complicated; we knew that going in, that's a given. It's a ~1000-word article; it can't be the whole truth of anything. But I'd rather read one clear insightful treatment of some of the truth than a mess of qualifiers.

ajkjk 5y ago

I mostly disagree; I think the article hits it at something pretty true. Granted, "liar" is a bit of a strong term. But insincere -- definitely. In particular I think the 'lie' most people who are trying to write but can't get it to happen are telling themselves is that they _want_ to be writing at all. Most of the time people want to want to write, but they don't actually _want to_. If you truly want to do something, it happens effortlessly (barring some problematic anxiety getting in the way). The rest of the time, you just wish you wanted to. The distinction between "wanting to do something" and "wanting to want to do something" has been very helpful in my life. Particularly because it helps me not feel bad when I can't get myself to do something. Usually giving up on wanting-to-want and doing something else for a while eventually leads to the actual desire coming back, once it's freed from the anxiety of trying to force it.

kayodelycaon 5y ago
> The distinction between "wanting to do something" and "wanting to want to do something" has been very helpful in my life. That concept been helpful for me too. The problem I have with this article is it’s presentation is not very helpful to people who don’t already understand the underlaying ideas behind the motivation to write the article.
aidenn0 5y ago
I think "wanting to want" is part of it, but there's something more fundamental: wanting to do something vs wanting to have done something in the future. I want to stay in bed, binge Netflix, play video games and read books all day. One year from now, that's not what I want to have spent the past year doing. I don't know about everybody else, but this is an underlying tension in my life.
- ajkjk 5y ago
  I think everyone has that. For what it's worth it seems like the path to _not_ doing that involves being fine with doing it. Somehow the 'wanting to have done something this year' causes a sort of anxiety that makes one not do things. I find that when I can release the feeling that I ought to be doing something, or that I'm failing or doing the wrong thing, I... start to desire to do things again and end up happier with the result. This backwards logic underlies all of 'depression', in my experience. If you have a neurotic need to be something or have done something, that neurotic need can only manifest in 'symbolic action' -- like visibly starting work (only to give up shortly thereafter), or performatively talking about how you're doing something or planning to do it. But neurotic motivation isn't _actual_ motivation. It's only purpose, I think, biologically must be to get you 'near' what you feel like you should be doing, in hopes that that causes it to happen somehow. When you have a neurotic motivation that's at odds with who you are, or that you don't know how to immediately act on, it causes you to sort of .. shut down. Because you can't immediately become who you 'wish you were', you just do ... nothing, operating in the lowest-energy state, chasing immediate rewards like eating, doing things that are suggested to you, and binging the highest-dopamine rewards like video games or netflix. When I've realized this about particular 'needs' in the past, I've been able to see the need dissipate, and I suddenly feel much free-r to actually be myself and do things I want to do, which confusingly is more effective at getting to whoever you actually wanted to be anyway. The key is not _needing_ to be that person. If you feel bad about not being something, it just, like, breaks everything in your brain. In the case of TFA: if you feel like you need to be a writer, you sit down and think about writing, but your creativity is broken because you're just operating neurotically. So quit it; don't try to write until you _want_ to. Related: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-problem-behind-my-depression-and-anxiety-after-20-years/ https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob... which is the article that initially got me thinking in ways that got rid of some of the 'neurotic needs' that were making it hard to be freely motivated. Although it feels like I keep finding new problems of this sort, I've definitely fixed a few of them in the past, and somehow once fixed they seem to _stay_ fixed.