Age of Comics

thatguywhoexists-deactivated201 asked:

what advice do you have for someone that has had writers block for the past 6 or 7 years?

this will sound harsh but you’re probably not a writer.

writer’s writer every day. it’s ok, not everyone is.

but if you consider yourself one, get off your ass and get back to work!! write about why you haven’t been writing . anything. just write.

danhasatumblr

"Writers block for six or seven years." What a doofus.

thefuckinrealest

(Beg to differ but) writing shouldn’t be forced, it should come naturally. As a writer myself, there have been weeks, months that I could not produce anything at all—that seemed sufficient enough to my level of satisfaction, so I’d constantly scrap it. However, after those weeks/months of absolutely nothing, when I least expect it suddenly I find myself writing the most profound words out of nowhere. Someone that has writer block for 6-7 years may go crazy trying to search for inspiration, when instead inspiration would find them when they stop looking. This may be controversial but it doesn’t make sense to put a timeline on how often someone writes before they are considered a ‘writer’.

brianmichaelbendis

or…

writing is a discipline, a practice, a religion …

i would love to consider myself all kinds of things but unless i’m actually actively doing them i am probably kidding myself.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.- STEPHEN KING

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed. - RAY BRADBURY

ruckawriter

Brian is right.

Brian is being far more diplomatic about this than I would ever be.

The excuse of waiting for inspiration leads to exactly what is described; 6 to 7 years of producing nothing. This is the difference between being a writer and someone who likes to write.

A writer fucking writes. Whether she likes it or not, whether she wants to or not, whether she’s inspired or not. She pushes the boulder, like Sisyphus, until the damn thing rolls or shatters or reverses and crushes her. But she doesn’t sit there and wait until it feels good or it feels right or until the stars are right or anything else. Writing takes discipline infinitely more than it takes talent. That’s the dirty little secret of being a writer. You want to be a writer? Put your ass in the chair and put in your 10,000 hours and your 100,000 pages and then you’ll be a writer.

And yes, I know how harsh this sounds. I know what it sounds like. But it’s the difference between being a writer and simply being someone who feels good about putting their words down when they feel it.

If you want to argue that waiting is necessary, it’s what’s required, then I would offer you’re making excuses for why you’re not writing.

Writing isn’t a profession and it isn’t a hobby. It’s a fucking debilitating illness. It’s an addiction. You either write or you don’t. But you don’t sit around waiting for inspiration. It’s a craft, and you hone it, the way you would hone any other craft — by doing it.

Now get the hell off my lawn.

wheelr

There’s a fascinating pair of conversational trousers being made here. Down the right leg are the Tumblr posts agreeing with Bendis about the demands and compulsions of being a writer, and down the left leg are the Tumblr posts complaining that this is elitist, exclusionary and unfair. And there are a lot of professional writers down the “you must” leg, and I haven’t noticed any professional writers in the “I can’t” leg.

I don’t mean to insult the “I can’t” people by pointing that out, but I do think it’s illustrative of a problem - an irony - about writing. We don’t use enough words to describe it. Everyone who writes is a writer.

Compare that to cooking. I’m passionate about food - more so than most people. I don’t just like eating; I don’t just like cooking; I love learning about food. I read about it all the time - not just recipe books, but food history, food geography, food encyclopaedias - and I write about it. I know a lot and I always want to know more. Food is an enormous part of my life.

But I’m not a chef. Because being a chef takes discipline, training, experience, and mania. A chef lives in the kitchen. A chef cooks every day. A chef makes mastery of food the focus of their life. A chef occupies an elite position, because a chef earns it.

Greg Rucka is right when he makes the distinction between being a writer and being someone who likes to write, but he’s using “writer” to mean the writing equivalent of “chef”. The problem is that we don’t have a different word for that. The best we can do is stick the word “professional” to the front of “writer”, but that’s not the right distinction.

The distinction is that there are people who have to write, and there are people who don’t have to but really like to. Both sets of people use the word “writer” to describe themselves because we don’t have enough words to go around, but they’re not the same.

Most of the successful writers you’ll ever meet are people with the mania to do it every day. They’re chefs.

The existence of chefs does not mean your passion for food doesn’t count, nor does it make your cooking any less delicious. But if you don’t have that mania, you’ll never be a chef.

Age of Comics

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.