I never have writers block but…

false starts, a hack, productivity

The problem

A couple of days ago I wrote an article for the Soaring Twenties Social Club called Automated Writing: Should writers be worried about AI? I sent it to

Thomas J Bevan

at 15:29, and he published it at 18:00. But here’s the sordid truth: at 10:00 that day I didn’t have a clue what I was going to write. Even worse, at 14:00 I still was none the wiser.

Gotcha! You say. So the great prolificist had run out of ideas, eh? Well actually no: I had the opposite problem. I’d had so many ideas and corresponding false starts that I was floundering in a sea of ideas. (I like that phrase so much I’m going to use it again: I was floundering in a sea of ideas.)

So what do I mean by “false starts”? For each idea, I either did the research, or wrote a few paragraphs, or both. However, one or both of the following things then happened:

• I lost interest in the idea. Perhaps I’ve listened to too much Enya in my time, but I really do believe that if the writer finds an article boring to write, it’s pretty certain that readers will find it boring to read. If that’s how it is, cut your losses, outsource the work to ChatGPT and be done with it. And make sure you tell readers that’s what you’ve done, unless honesty isn’t very important to you.

• I wrote one or two paragraphs and then ran out of things to say. Now, I’m all in favour of short pieces: there’s a whole art to writing short. See, for further elucidation, How to write short, with a specific focus on book reviews, and my review of Short form creative writing. However, if I set out with the intention of writing long, it’s a bit of a jolt if the thing suddenly just ends.

This was rather problematic, because I was right up against the deadline. However, I have three quick hacks that bail me out every time. Here they are.