How to Beat Writer's Block

Writer's Block? Not Me!



Hack your way out of writer’s block

43 Folders

Nov 18, 2004



I recently had occasion to do some…errr…research on writer’s block. Yeah, research. That’s what I was doing. Like a scientist. I found lots of great ideas to get unstuck and wrote the best ones on index cards to create an Oblique Strategies-like deck. Swipe, share, and add you own in comments.



Talk to a monkey

Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout.



Do something important that’s very easy

Is there a small part of your project you could finish quickly that would move things forward?



Try freewriting

Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you're typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?



Take a walk

Get out of your writing brain for 10 minutes. Think about bunnies. Breathe.

Take a shower; change clothes - Give yourself a truly clean start.



Write from a persona

Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.



Get away from the computer

Write someplace new - If you’ve been staring at the screen and nothing is happening, walk away. Shut down the computer. Take one pen and one notebook, and go somewhere new.



Quit beating yourself up

You can’t create when you feel ass-whipped. Stop visualizing catastrophes, and focus on positive outcomes.



Stretch

Maybe try vacuuming your lungs too.



Add one ritual behavior

Get a glass of water exactly every 20 minutes. Do pushups. Eat a Tootsie Roll every paragraph. Add physical structure.



Listen to new music

Try something instrumental and rhythmic that you’ve never heard before. Put it on repeat, then stop fiddling with iTunes until your draft is done.



Write crap

Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.



Unplug the router

Metafilter and Boing Boing aren’t helping you right now. Turn off the Interweb and close every application you don’t need. Consider creating a new user account on your computer with none of your familiar apps or configurations.



Write the middle

Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.



Do one chore

Sweep the floor or take out the recycling. Try something lightly physical to remind you that you know how to do things.



Make a pointless rule

You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.



Work on the title

Quickly make up five distinctly different titles. Meditate on them. What bugs you about the one you like least?



Write five words

Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.



Beating That Block

Angkor Wat in Virtual Reality

Angkor Wat



Here's some background on the amazingly ambitious World Heritage Virtual Reality Tour:



The WHTour is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a documentary and educational image bank of printable panoramic pictures and online virtual tours for all sites registered as World Heritage by the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). All panoramas are shooted, built and uploaded on this website by Tito Dupret, a 33 year-old multimedia director from Belgium and Bijuan Chen, his 26-year old multimedia assistant from China.



So far, they have covered Bangladesh, Eastern Canada, China, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, The Philippines and Vietnam. This represents 13.2 % of all 788 WH sites : 104 sites with 525+ Virtual Reality movies (VRs) available via the above menus. This project is at its beginning only and will need years to complete. The WHTour is slowly growing since July 2001 and constantly seeking financial help in order to pursue its mission. People involved in the WHTour are volunteering.



The following explanation about Virtual Reality is taken from the World Heritage Tour site, and gives some background on the fabulous VR images found at their homepage. You'll need Quicktime and some patience - about 60 seconds - to download each file if you're still stuck with 56K dial-up connections.



Quicktime and virtual reality



In order to navigate through the WHTour web site, you need to download the Quicktime plugin. It is easy, fast, free. You will then be able to navigate in virtual reality movies the way described here. Once you've downloaded a VR file, click once directly into the image, then hold the mouse down and drag it around. You seem to fly around the image in all directions, a 360 degree exploration of the environment. You can also zoom in closer with the "shift" key or zoom out with "ctrl" key.



What is virtual reality (VR)?



Virtual reality opens up the world to us in a way hitherto unknown, by allowing people to visit almost any place from practically any location without time constraints. It is a media drawing upon traditional photography and film industry. It depicts more than a photo but without the time limits of a movie. It is an interactive media meaning that the audience is active. Without their participation, the VR movie would be without animation ; in essence the audience gives life to the picture by viewing it from various angles, zooming in/out and clicking hyperlinks/icons.



It is also a very "light" and practical media. One person with skills and a backpack is enough to cover any site in the world. For this reason, it is inexpensive to produce compared to other animated systems. Moreover, it is a broad-ranging medium insofar as it can be supported on many different media systems, from a light web interface to heavy cinema productions or any printing support and at any quality level.



What is QuickTime VR ?



QuickTime VR lets you rotate your view of a scene through a complete 360 horizontal x 180-degree vertical sphere. As you change your view of the scene, correct perspective is maintained, creating the effect of being at the location and looking around. QuickTime VR is the first mainstream technology to enable theses experiences based on real world scenes.



How does the WHTour create virtual reality movies?



Taking a selection of digital images, each VR movie is made by stitching together 28 of these images. The computer creates the effect of being inside a sphere giving the user the scope to view all around oneself at 360 x 180 degrees. Actually, this sphere is made with the six separate sides of a cube : the front, right, back, left, top and bottom sides. The borders of each side connect to the others and the illusion is perfect.



For the WHTour, all VR movies are produced on site with a laptop and then disseminated on the internet through local connections. Each VR is about 1/2 day postproduction according to the complexity of stitching. Each VR of the WHTour is manually stitched.



Angkor Wat in Virtual Reality

Fantastic Travel Photos at BigTrip.Org

Angkor Wat by Isaac at BigTrip.Org



Have you ever wanted to travel around the world, take outstanding photographs, and post them on your website to universal acclaim? Well, Isaac and his girlfriend did this last year, and the results are nothing short of stunning. The most curious thing about his website is the complete lack of personal biography, contact information, or background on his journey. Does anyone have the story on Isaac and his round-the-world photographic tour? Be sure to check his images of Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh, Hong Kong, and India.



The Best Travel PhotoBlog Ever

Travel Magazines for the Working Man

Antartica by NASA



Travel Magazines for the Rest of Us

Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations



Quick, name the last three travel magazines or newspaper sections you read. Now think hard and try to remember how many articles you saw about traveling on a tight budget.



Those two answers probably sum up everything you need to know about why people travel the way they do. Where I live in the US, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel has done a good job of showing the mainstream reader how to get a better deal, but its circulation is dwarfed by that of Travel & Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler, magazines that are really aimed at the most affluent citizens of the one of the world's most affluent countries. Big city newspapers such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune contain some great travel writing, but only a fraction of the typical Sunday travel section pays more than passing attention to finding the best values. It’s a little better in Europe and Australia, but most publications still tilt disproportionally toward expensive travel—-after all, that’s where the ad dollars come from.



This was true even during the travel slump and worldwide recession of the past few years. You see lots of luxury, luxury, luxury, as if every traveler boarding a plane is on their way to a five-star hotel and a spa treatment. Over time this warps readers' perceptions and makes them think every vacation has to cost a fortune.



A fellow travel writer calls these swanky publications "travel porn" and I can't think of a more apt description. I once saw a cartoon in a men's magazine in which a woman is standing next to a pot-bellied man in an easy chair. "Why do you watch that stuff?" the woman asks, pointing to a pornographic movie playing on the TV. "Because it makes me feel like everyone in the world is having a wild and crazy time," he replies. "Well, everyone except me."



The idea of fantasizing about a life you can't lead yourself is a big part of the "armchair traveler" appeal of glossy travel magazines. A typical issue contains dozens of advertisements for diamond watches, luxury sports cars, and handbags that retail for over a thousand dollars. Between the ads are stories about resorts we have no business frequenting unless we're in that lofty portion of the population who has more money than they have time to spend. It's nice to look at the stunning photos and read about locations if that's as far as it goes. For too many non-millionaire tourists, however, they look at those stories and think that's how everyone travels-everyone except them. So when they pick up the phone or log on to make travel reservations, they go in with the mindset that travel is, and should be, expensive.



Next time you leaf through a travel magazine, take a look at the non-travel advertisements. Do those products match up with the way you live your life? If not, try a different magazine-and a different kind of travel.



Some great magazines for independent travelers got killed off when the recession hit, including Escape, trips, and Big World. A few good ones have stuck around however:



Outpost

Published in Toronto, with a Canadian perspective. Was always great, but is now hands down the best travel magazine in North America for thinking, independent travelers. Insightful and culturally sensitive writing, with a view from the ground, not from the Four Seasons balcony.



Transitions Abroad

I'm biased since I have a regular column in here, but it's a great resource. Created in 1977 as the "antidote to tourism," it is the definitive guide to working, studying, or volunteering overseas. They also publish some brief travel articles that provide plenty of no-nonsense advice. The publishing company is known for some very helpful books and directories for those planning to live overseas for some time. Click here to subscribe or check a quality bookstore or library for a copy to see for yourself.



Modern Nomad

Only published in fits and starts, but this magazine manages to combine an experimental edge with a corresponding usefulness for all nomads. Not afraid to tackle taboo subjects and is open-minded enough to cover Asbury Park, NJ and Vietnam in the same issue. Also contains interesting book and world music reviews.



Frommer's Budget Travel

This is a corporate magazine mostly geared toward package tourists, and a lot of articles are about the usual suspects (Italy, the Caribbean, etc.) but it does focus on independent overseas travel a fair bit. You can subscribe for next to nothing by checking the Web subscription sites, so you'll certainly get your money's worth from the web links and resources alone. Has some good info about value destinations and how to get good airfare and hotel deals.



Wanderlust

This UK magazine is a great find if you can get a Europe-bound friend to pick it up or you live near a magazine store that carries imports. (Or if you live in England of course.) Literate travel articles, great travel book reviews, and beautiful photography, but all the while still remembering that most travelers aren't living off $500 a day.



Travel Magazines for the Budget Traveler -- Links and More Information Here