Part IV: Tips and tricks for getting some actual writing done.

Writer's block counter-attack with inspirational backup

5/3/13

Inspiration!

Every writer has experienced the rush of inspiration. That time when you have an idea so good, so insistent, so perfect that you have to stop whatever you're doing, find a pen and a napkin and get it down before you lose it forever into the silent air. Those are good moments filled with rewarding creative fury.

But more often, we experience writer's block, or at least writer's lethargy, where you have some seeds of ideas, or half of a good concept for a character or scene, or, on the bad days, nothing at all you can imagine writing a single word about.

When that happens, it's not so much about structuring your writing as it is about getting started in the first place. Here are some resources to help get you writing:

The Writer's Digest has a free "Writing Prompt Boot Camp" download.
Daily Writing Tips offers a post with prompts, as well as a lot more links to resources that do similar things.
Make Use Of offers a list of 10 more websites to "Cure" Writer's Block. Oh, if only there really was a cure...
The One Minute Writing Prompt offers a daily prompt and asks you to write for just one of the 1,440 minutes of the day to write about it.
A Story A Day challenges you to write using a character from a game! Blogger Julie Duffy also has a whole book there about Breaking Writer's Block.
LitBridge separates out writing prompts into genre, seasonal, holiday, etc. to tie them to context.
My recommendation: I like to pick up a book I really like by and author I respect and admire and use the first sentence from his or her novel as a starting point. Later, when I've written off of it and gotten to my own storyline, I drop the first sentence or rewrite it beyond recognition.