not-so oblique strategies for rutted writing

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lately i've become immensely frustrated with my own writing. in order to pay the rent, i do music-related copywriting work on the side, and i feel like my regular 'voice' has been gradually swallowed whole by a repulsive blurby/voiceover sort of style.

i can identify all sorts of problems with my current methods and output (namely the major disconnect between how i want to say things and how i end up saying them) but i'm at a loss to self-prescribe new ways of writing or approaches. so i suppose my question is especially aimed at the professional editors on ilm: what *tangible* advice have you administered to writers in the hopes of detoxifying their work? writers who've been in ruts: do you have back-to-basics techniques or philosophies that you fall back on when your own words start to read suspiciously?

― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 04:54 (twenty-two years ago)

As a writer, I've fallen into the same kind of doldrums so I can definitely empathize with your frustration. And as a sportswriter, I find that, at times, there is a similar disconnection between approach and result. Part of it, I think, is the tedium of writing ad nauseum about the same damn things.
Personally, whenever I feel I'm in a writing slump, I try to find something that rekindles the passion for what I do — a compelling feature, for example — and spend a few days with it.
Sure, sometimes I have to spend some of my own time with the story, but I'm actually engaged by what I'm doing. While I still consider my audience, I'm writing the story more for myself.
Also, when I find myself using the same rote phrases or words, I deliberately scour my article, excising the lazy writing after finishing the first or second draft.
I hope that helps.

― Christian Rawk (Christian Rawk), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 06:02 (twenty-two years ago)

talk into a tape recorder and then transcribe, unedited, word for word.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 06:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I guess I've got a similar issue. I write for a newspaper covering municipal minutiae as my day job and have to write in that semi serious and unnecessarily official media tone. It's a typical community weekly; I write every story and have to turn in 5,000 words every week describing developments that can be summed up in one word: pointless.

I can give you a story on anything imaginable on a 30 minute deadline, but who the fuck cares about that when it comes time to put character, personality and heart into a story that actually deserves to be told?

Last thing I want to do after a long day is come home and write. Even when the spirit moves me, it eats me alive when I'm trying to find my own voice. It's just not there anymore. I used to have this quick wit and humorous urgency in what I wrote when I was writing what I wanted to, but everything I write now is watered down by the concise, dumbed down, inverted pyramid, zero attention span AP style.

Bottom line to me now is, if you love to write, don't get a writing job.

― Shaun (shaun), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 08:31 (twenty-two years ago)

If you can afford it, take a break. Don't write anything. I couldn't afford it, but I sort of forced some hands and took about a month long break a while ago, and I didn't WRITE ANYTHING (except ILX, but that doesn't count).
Now I'm feeling reinvigorated and finding new ways to approach things.
But it sucks when you realize something you did for play for so long has become nothing more than work. And you realize, hey, whatever happened to play anyhow?

I'm currently trying to broaden myself. For so long, my two passions (or whatever similarly cheesy terms might express this thing) have been writing and music. And now, those are, essentially my job. So I have to find new things, not just so that I can, y'know, RELAX, but also to avoid becoming trapped into insular writing.

― Huck Everlasting (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

If in doubt, get the rioja out.

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 15:07 (twenty-two years ago)

what's a rioja?

― Shaun (shaun), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

is that the strawberry creme tequila?

― Huck Everlasting (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 15:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Spanish red wine, you heathens!

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list.

― Eno (MarkR), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

write as usual, but when you finish a piece, delete ever third word.

― Huck Everlasting (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

mark, is that an actual oblique strategy? i guess there's no reason those couldn't help writers as well.

― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Translate your text via Babelfish to German and then back to English.

If you have a laptop, shimmy up the nearest tree and write from there.

― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 16:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Read. A lot. Definitely not music criticism, and not straightforward non-fiction prose either. There's a place for both, but a steady diet of either flattens my imagination. I need good loose adventurous writing--personally, Ashbery tends to free up my brain, find somebody who works for you. The more good words come in, the more good words go out. The less I read, the more I suck.

― Keith Harris (kharris1128), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:43 (twenty-two years ago)

write as usual, but when you finish a piece, delete ever third word.

Tom Ewing gave me the exact same person of advice once.

LOLHIVEMINDSET.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:50 (twenty-two years ago)

write as usual, but when you finish a piece, delete ever third word.

Meltzer says he used to do it in the 70s. That's, uh, whereIgottheidea.

― Huck Me Gently (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:57 (twenty-two years ago)

every third word deleted:

I think the opposite. I'm always worried that if I read someone I really like (I read so little and this hasn't happened since I got sucked into Vonnegut's brilliance during college) that their style is going to hijack whatever originality I do have.

― Shaun (shaun), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 20:20 (twenty-two years ago)

stop worrying about it.

― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 20:29 (twenty-two years ago)

play through the pain, like an athlete? (who eventually gets an off-season)

― Huck Me Gently (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 20:30 (twenty-two years ago)

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