Other People's Ideas

I agree with Brad Guigar's belief that writer's block is not an inability to come up with ideas; it is a place of hypernegatvity, where no ideas you come up with are good enough in your mind. However, even if that is the case, there still remains a problem that needs to be dealt with. Regardless of the reason, the fact is that you aren't writing.

There are a lot of good exercises out there to help. In general, the best advice is to just start writing. Get out of your head and into the groove. I do agree with this advice, but I find it easier said then done. It feels like a struggle to get myself to write when I think that nothing I write is any good.

But there is one thing I have found that always gets me out of writer's block: listening to other people's ideas. When I hear somebody start explaining an idea for a story they have, it sparks my brain and puts it back in gear. All of a sudden, I get a million ideas for that story idea. I want to come up with my own plots and backstories and everything else.

Basically, it works like a writing prompt. But writing prompts don't work as well for me. Something about hearing another person talk about their ideas always works for me, though.

I always feel strange about using other people's ideas. I feel like I'm stealing it from them. Realistically, it isn't that big of a deal. If you are working on a basic concept and basic character structures and relationships, you could very well end up creating completely different stories. The more specific the ideas, of course, the more related your stories will be and the more it will be like you are stealing. Still, it shouldn't be that big of a concern.

Even if I don't use other people's ideas, I still am excited to create. I have new thoughts and new concepts that I can toy around with and see if I like. And at that moment, I am no longer in writer's block.

So if you feel yourself stuck in a rut or otherwise disenfranchised with writing, listen to other people's ideas. It just might spark your own imagination. If nothing else, it is another way to get out of your head.