Challenging Yourself to Overcome Writer's Block
The Critique Challenge
A critique challenge? Just 50 words? Not sure about this. Seems interesting but hard. Fifty one words! Gotta cut something. That was fun. Another day. Too many positive ones. Should probably balance it with something else. Let me take it to the extreme, and see how many I can write?
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Is that exactly 50 words? Yes, yes it is.
Why would someone submit so many submissions to a challenge? Well, it started as me asking for help from a Mariam Naeem with a story. But then I started asking her about her writing. I suggested she enter the Critique challenge, because she reads way more books than I do. Also, she is a great writer, and the world needs her insights on many things.
But then this morning, I was thinking about how we writers have difficulty writing sometimes. And one of the suggestions I like to give to people when they ask how to break writer’s block is to just write. Literally write nonsense. Pick a random thing to write about. So, that’s what I started to do this afternoon. I wanted to see how many critiques I could write in a short amount of time. But I also wanted to see how quickly I could change subjects, and see how many different subjects I could cover. And that’s how I ended up with 12 official entries into the Critique challenge (13 if you count this one).
What was the point of this? Well, 600 words is the minimum needed to submit an article in most communities on Vocal. Thus, 12 critiques at 50 words each is enough to make one article. How long did this take? I can’t quite answer that, as some of these were written before this afternoon. But starting with the Stargate critique, and ending with this one, I started writing at about 4:10ish pm. It is now 6:05pm as I’m wrapping this up. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always have days where I can write what is now approximately 613 words in about two hours. But I just want to encourage those authors out there with the Block. Just start writing, and see what happens.
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All of my Critique Challenge entries:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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Comments (5)
Wrote a satire about a writer going to a writers block convention, and getting so upset about it, he starts writing. I think I will rewrite this for vocal from a different angle... https://blog.reedsy.com/short-story/1l3iqu/
I like the idea of writing nonsense to just keep going... that's how I really got started. And then I heard a neil gaiman interview today where he basically says the exact same thing... if you have a page of nonsense you have something, if you have an empty page you have nothing.
Yes, challenging oneself is the best way to kill writer's block. That's why I created my poetry forms and the flashku, among other things. I'm going to finish reading your entries now. :-)
I like that you gave yourself the Challenge Challenge and met it!
More sage counsel.