h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm really trying to write another edited guide entry, but I just can't get going. I feel really listless.

I have maybe 10 or 20 entries that I've started to write but not finished. They seem to fall into the following categories:

90% complete, but having written it I think the subject's really boring, and the finished article just isn't what I set out to write.

60% complete, but although large sections are written, there's no thread I can think of which would hold the thing together.

10% complete, but 100% researched - in text files containing thousands of lines of cut-and-pasted facts to wade through.

What I really want to do of course is to find a job, so I spend all my time trawling the internet for vacancies and sending my CV out. I know I'd feel guilty if I spent a day concentrating on an h2g2 entry instead (and it can take that amount of solid concentration to crack one of these).

I do try to keep up with the site, though, and the new skin and the proposed h2g2 sell-off have given me other things to worry about and divert me from the task. All I seem to be able to do these days is write short quizzes for The h2g2 Post (this week's is here, if you're interested in that sort of thing: A81192530)

Any advice on how I can get my writing head back on will be gratefully received.

I realise you probably don't have the excuse I have - that if I'm between writing tasks, writing another short story or guide entry is a way to have more 'writing samples'. I guess you don't need them.

No ideas from here, I'm afraid, but if your writer's block results in more of your fantastic quizzes, I wouldn't tell you anyway.

I only wish that I could help. I write very little and it does seem like it takes all day just to keep up with the new threads, PR and ACEing. Even those last two I don't do as much as I should.

In my third year at uni I went through a phase where I was stressing myself out through guilt. Whatever I did, I felt guilty that I wasn't doing something else. Actually, like you being unemployed was the worst. Even when there were no jobs going (the Shrewsbury job Market is rather limited) I wouldn't let myself do something else because I should have been looking for work.

Eventually I solved it by timetabling my days. Of course, if there were a sudden spurt of jobs I would deal with them there and then, but otherwise I would do my two hours a day and then make sure that I did an hours exercise and an hours practice on a musical instrument. And do house chores and stuff. All of a sudden I was actually doing stuff and felt happier. I may have missed one job somewhere, but I didn't feel miserable any more.

Of course, if you are in London then that could be more tricky as there are lots of jobs, just a lot of applicants.

Try timetabling in a solid afternoon of h2g2 and just see how you feel. Give yourself permission. That sort of thing works for me.

Good luck, whatever you try.

Pick just one of your entries, probably one that is nearly done. What would you like a reader to know or be able to do with the information in the entry? Do you want them to gain a skill, think differently about an event or situation, enjoy your favorite sport or vacation spot?

What you have to do when looking for work is the same as everything else; if you was doing an OU course for a full credit, long time since I did anything like that, you would allocate 15hrs per week and absolutely no more. Same for looking for work, allocate x hours per week but make sure you have time off, like Sunday.

If you don't, you end up doing nothing.

Just let them stew in your head and you'll find they write themselves. Don't try and force them.

Take a break and you'll find the boring ones aren't so boring after all.

Okay, writer trick: Look for the 'hook'. Think about the first section. The one that's supposed to grab the reader. Chuckle over your cleverness.

Then realise that Sam and Chris will eventually ask you to cut about half of it out...

But it gets you there.

This morning, I had written a brilliant script for a four-panel flash for my course. I was so proud of it...

About an hour later, I got an email from the editor to 'please keep the amount of flash down, because we have budget constraints.'

Also, realise that writing is work, too. So give yourself a couple of hours to do it, then stop for awhile.

This is all really good advice, thanks.

You're right that my time management has suffered, and I need to get scheduling things (my next OU maths course has just started too).

Keep the ideas coming. I think these could help all of us.

For many people, writer's block is not being able to think of anything to say. It sounds as if you don't have that problem, Icy.

In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig, the narrator expounds on this problem. He says it is usually caused by the writer knowing lots of stuff but not thinking anybody would be interested in reading it. He suggests that you should write in great detail about something small - try describing your own street, each building. If this is too big a task, pick one building and try describing that, or even just one door, or one doorhandle. Soon you'll find that you'll have loads to say.

Good advice. And then ignore everybody who says, 'You can make more out of nothing than anybody I know...'

Yes, this was said to me. Yes, it was said on h2g2. No, I'm not mad. I think I'd just gone on for 500 words about finding the housekeys under an overweight .

Yes, I'll see if I can apply that principle to some of those 60%-finished ones

Oh, I got two phone calls this afternoon - both inviting me to job interviews - so I'm treating this journal as a good luck omen.

Fingers crossed and thumbs pressed!

>>> Fingers crossed and thumbs pressed!

How can you type, Dmitri?

Like Franz Joseph Haydn played the piano - nose.

Nothing wrong with writing something that may, at first glance, be of limited appeal to people - that doesn't mean it is boring. I tend to write about stuff with limited interest - if you're not interested in castles or the Isle of Wight you won't be interested in what I write, but that doesn't put me off writing it.

I suspect that I enjoy writing more than anyone else ever enjoys reading what I write, and hopefully the more practice I get at it, the better I'll be.

Having said that, there are lots of articles I've started and not finished. The first is one I started writing in 2001 - an article about King Henry VI and I still haven't finished it. I tinkered with it a few weeks ago, but one day will actually get it done. Unless someone beats me to it.

<BB<

When I joined h2g2 in 3003, writing for the edited guide was all the rage.
It no longer is, at least not for me.

That is in the future.

I wrote something down in 200? and after 7000 words couldn't think of how to finish.

Not touched it since.

The guide is the core, without it we would twitter

Oh, I like the guide. I always did. It's a great guide to life and everything UK centric (mainly).