Ugh. Low-hanging fruit. Like making fun o’ The Room or the “Realist Left.” Let’s get this o’er with.
& what do you know, my 2 favorite writers ’bout writers are @ the top o’ Google’s shitty search:
Fucking fun.
SmartBlogger’s 27 Ways to Lose Your Dignity
O, fuck. Ne’er mind. I’m thinking o’ Problogger, not CamelFuckingCaseAsIfIt’sAFuckingJavaClass SmartBlogger. Sorry. They’re such memorable names that stand out so well, I have no idea how I made the mistake. This is ‘specially tragic after they took the time to change it from its ol’ name (as they bizarrely proudly proclaim under their bland logo), “boostblogtraffic.com”–presumably when they realized they could make mo’ money selling it to a domain scalper than off the blog itself.
Anyway, they’re the 1st article, & it’s truly “outside the box,” as you unhip kids say today. It doesn’t teach you how to cure writer’s block, but to “crush” it, with Math.floor( Math.random() * 100 ) + 1 techniques. & to demonstrate this so well, the article has a painting o’ a fist punching the fuck out o’ a stack o’ keyboards. Oops. Now you’re truly writer’s blocked, bud, since now you can’t write shit ’cause you stupidly destroyed all your means o’ typing, jackass. Maybe you’ll think o’ something on your drive to the local PC store to buy a new keyboard.
Let me guess…
You’re staring at the blank screen. Your brain is fried. You can feel a headache coming on.
Everything here’s right but the “staring at a blank screen” part, since I’m obviously reading your text–though I s’pose you could call it blank in essence.
Anyway, the techniques they give are basically all, “Act like a jackass,” in various ways. It’s the 2.0 version o’ those list books full o’ whatever random shit the authors came up with that Seanbaby made fun o’ (ironically, on a website full o’ list articles…):
1. Develop Schizophrenia
2. Do what I’m doing in this article.
Also, I question their claim that “you can correct mistakes in a passionate piece of writing, but you can’t add emotions to a flat post. So let it rip.” Flatulent blog posts are the rudest.
3. Distract yourself dicking round with computer programs–the opposite o’ what most advisors say.
4. “¿How about a drinky poo?” (Ziggy saying)
& that doens’t e’–
Wait, wrong article.
4. Ah, here we go: take up space on public transit for no reason.
5. Drink coffee, e’en though it’s apparently bad for you, but you should take it, anyway. Good, I like this: punishment is the best tool.
6. The 6th advice is to stop writing something… which they aren’t doing, anyway, since they have writer’s block. ¿Did you forget the point o’ your article already?
7. Stop pl–¿Who the fuck writes outlines for a blog post? ¿& how would that be any different from the article itself, since they’re almost all just #’d lists, anyway?
8. “Surprise Yourself” 😉 I was sure surprised by the big white space where an image that didn’t load was s’posed to go. Maybe you should add, “Distract yourself by actually learning how to use your blog software ‘stead o’ using it like an orangutan bashing its fists on the keyboard–¡damn it, you broke it ‘gain! ¡Back to Re-PC!” onto the list.
9. I love this 1: if you find you can’t use your alloted time to write anything useful, do it ‘nother time. But this presumes that the person doesn’t have infinite time, & thus is limited in this case. Otherwise, writer’s block wouldn’t be much o’ a problem: just wait & have patience. This “advice” is a round’bout way o’ avoiding the problem in total.
Actually, that’s all o’ this advice, truly.
10. Nope. Fuck you, you lost me. This is the same as “Take up space on public transit for no reason,” but with different words.
¿Couldn’t e’en make it to 10? You’ll ne’er make it on Letterman’s retired show. You’ll ne’er make it on Neglected Mario Characters’s equally-reputable top-10 lists.
Goins To Sell You Begged Questions for Paper
Goins wins an award for pissing me off so early on his shitpile o’ ads, with some vapid editorial text sprinkled on. The whole site is 1st covered by an ad for some free guide, which is clearly just a ‘scuse to get me email to sell to advertisers. I also love the vagueness–totally not intentional–involved in “100K readers in 18 months?” ¿Does he mean getting 100,000 readers in 18 months, or just 5,555 per month?
After withstanding that ad, we have mo’. 1st we get some spyware-seeming “notification” from PushCr–¡damn it, there’s ‘nother! I just looked back & saw ‘nother had popped up. This is almost self-parody by this point.
All right, after clicking “NO” a billion times, we finally get to the actual conte–I’m kidding: the slush.
A’least he didn’t bother with some obnoxiously zany title, but kept it to the simple, albeit redundant, “14 Tricks that Work.” I’d sure fucking hope they work if you bothered to write ’bout them; though I admit that writing a list o’ solutions to a problem that one acknowledges up-front don’t work would be creative.
But then we’re talking ’bout Goins™®©, so that’s out the chute.
My favorite part o’ his “tricks” is that some o’ them contradict others. In 1 he says one should “avoid distractions,” but then he advises you to play with LEGOS–truly an important step in the writing process, right up there with prewriting & roughing.
¿& why does this racist think I don’t listen to classical or jazz music already–that I need to mix it up? I don’t need to mix any shit up, punk. As the wise Lord Keynes said, “So please just f*ck off if all you can do is insult me like this, because I am not going to be slandered by anybody.” Get your voice out o’ this text, you witch–¡Out!
He follows this trite list with an equally-trite list o’ how not to. This includes the nonsense entry, “watching TV.” So I can get inspiration from reading books & playing fucking LEGOS, ¿but getting ideas from… TV? ¡Phhh! ¿Who e’er learned good writing from such shoddy tripe as Breaking Bad or The Twilight Zone (Look, I’m a bad defender for TV, since I lost mine years ago when I broke it trying to jump into it, all right) when you could read inspirational quotes?
O, but he’s saved the “fail-proof solution” for last–the 1 you don’t want to hear, man, ’cause it’s too fucking radical for you squares. Well, I’m not ‘fraid Goins. ¡Let’s smash the capitalism o’ writer’s block once & for all & uphold the dictatorship o’ the literati once & for all!
You overcome writer’s block by writing.
All the balloons pop.
In the spirit o’ these articles, let me offer 3 reasons why nobody wants to hear this advice:
1. Everyone’s already heard it a million times.
2. It’s begging the question–the true definition.
3. It doesn’t fucking work.
When people have writer’s block, they’re not barred from writing anything. Anyone can write “poop scoop” a thousand times. The point is that they have a goal, they have standards—a foreign word to Goins. They realize that writing whatever garbage comes to their mind is just as useless as not writing–e’en moreso, actually, since it distracts attention from other ways o’ getting ideas & gives one finger cramps.
¿You know what these lists ne’er have as an answer? (Admittedly it’s not a great answer, either; but it’s better than all these) “Stop writing & start thinking for once.” But then, I don’t think there’s much thinking going on ‘hind any o’ these articles. Too busy playing with LEGOS & riding buses like you’re god damn Wesley Willis–& you’re not god damn Wesley Willis, so just knock if off right now.
But don’t worry: Goins admits there’s a tiny flaw with his advice & adds a “caveat”:
(One caveat: This technique only works if you’re truly blocked and not “empty,” which is an entirely different matter altogether.)
Nowhere does he specify how I might discern whether I’m “blocked” or “empty”–& the fact that he puts scare quotes round that 2nd word himself shows that he probably doesn’t e’en know, either. This fucker’s probably laughing it up the ass as he posts these, knowing it’ll pollute the Google stream like soda-can connectors–& I’m just standing here with a tear slowly falling down my face. No dignity.
Top 10 Things Jay Does When He Gets Writers [sic–O, ¿Who am I kidding? It’s NC; we’ll be here all day] Block While Trying to Update NC
Hey, wait a minute: this wasn’t in Google’s search.
Well, it should’ve been.
In all its misspelled glory:
10. Has imaginary conversations with Luigi (Luigi: No you don’t. Jay: Sure I do. All the time. Don’t deny it. Luigi:(sigh) What a loser.)
9. Plays Super Mario Bros. 3
8. Mows the lawn and waits for a jolt of inspiration.
7. Stares blankly at the computer screen until he realizes that its a week later, in which case he becomes in more trouble.
6. Throws something together at the last minute. (I’ll put a new picture up. It looks like I updated.)
5. Skims through old NP magazines for ideas. Tip: This never works.
4. Decides to give up NC and start a new life without the internet. Sucsess rate: O%.
3. Goes through e-mail consisting of threats such as “Update NC now, you idiot!” or “Pokemon rules, you moron!”
2. Puts some of the spotlight on Kyle, who NEVER updates.
1. Doesn’t update NC.
10: Here we see that the venerable Jay Resop/Resup/Reesop/Respo came up with the schizophrenia idea long before that plagiarist SmartBlogger.
6: & thus “NC Shorts” was born.
4: In hindsight, this was much mo’ “sucsessful” than he thought.
3: Ugh. I agree entirely with his disdain. When I get threatening email ’bout Pokémon I expect them not to be gauche ‘nough to leave out the accented E.
2: Yeah, ¿what the fuck, Kyle? You haven’t written anything since November 11 this year. That was ages ago.
1. This is legitimately the best solution to writer’s block–¡guaranteed success!
Honorable Mentions:
Glad to see that this is as important a psychological problem as schizophrenia–probably ’cause it induced it in the idiots who took SmartBlogger’s advice.
Then ‘gain, this website also seems to have “quizzes,” so I doubt it’s particularly reputable. Either way, just to be sure, I did take their advice to buy their Pelennor Dust to snort, which apparently cures my self-hurt fetishes (if this article wasn’t already evidence to that).
¿What? ¿Aren’t you guys, like… prominent? That’s like Strunk & White offering writer’s block advice.
It’s the same advice as everyone else, but with less stupidity. Just read this in like a minute & ne’er waste your time on these articles e’er ‘gain.
& just to contradict myself…
J. J. W. Mezun’s Patented Writer’s Block Cure
- Masturbate to anime porn.
- Smash your face onto your desk. If you don’t have a desk, buy 1, & then do this step.
- Make bad blog posts ’bout bad blog posts ’bout writing, economics, video games, suicide, web design, & yuppie tripe.
- Do drugs.
- Whine ’bout your problems to everyone on the internet.
- Masturbate to GAP catalogues.
- Get a fucking job, you slob.
- Have a personal trauma happen so that your writer’s block problems pale in comparison.
- Masturbate to Walt Whitman poetry.
- Suicide.
- Make imaginary Wikipedia pages for imaginary political classes.
- Play Super Mario Bros. 3.
- Masturbate out o’ sheer frustration.
- & last, but not least: smash capitalism. If you can’t get interesting ideas for what to write ’bout from experiencing a good ol’ communist revolution, then you’re creatively hopeless.*
*Caveat: this trick doesn’t work if you end up getting killed in said communist revolution or purged by the succeeding regime.
¿Do you have any tricks you use to help you through writer’s block? Yeah, well not everything’s ’bout you, you know.
