Often

It depends what I'm writing. Essays I start immediately once I decide on topic and general argument. Fiction I stop and start.

Following

When a block tries to arise, I blink once and start writing and the block disappears and I write on like nothing happened.

Often

It happens sometimes.

Sometimes I do especially when I have some distractions.

Doris Ogueri

Thank you for your comment. I think so: Sometimes distractions help to overcome the blockade, but sometimes the distractions are so beautiful for me that I think: Do I have to write the essay at all? And then I write something else that I feel more like doing, for example diary.

Hein

Oluwaseun A. Otekunrin

Dear Oluwaseun, yes, sometimes it happens. I have asked the question because now my problem happens. I can all thinkable thinks write - for instance on RG - but starting my article. But such a talk is a good tool to come to reach a decision, thank you very much,

Hein

Saif Hosam Raheem

Dear Saif, if you say, that you often have experienced a blocking situation in writing, than I can recommend to use the facilities of RG, because helping other people or talking on own experiences give a good feeling, is my own impression. My problem in these days has another structure. There are so much preparations to do before I can begin that the whole enterprise is negative for my motivation. I know this from former times. I remember those situations which helped: If you get the chance - also by RG talk with oters - to get a new insight or new relevant knowledge of things which have to do with the own research. I have been waiting for this - and hope this doesn't last too long. Thank you for your remark. Hein

Marwan Khaleel Yousif

I see, you follow only but you are interested in the question obviously. would now like to say my trick, which I use when all other methods are useless. I try to contradict an important author, whom I have to quote in my essay, because he reflects the prevailing opinion - of course I can do this only with good arguments. To do this, you have to take a close look at the argumentation of the protagonist and ask yourself: Is there a weak point in his argumentation? There always is one. If you have discovered it, then suddenly you can also write the essay. Try it out. Kind regards, Hein Retter

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Stanley Wilkin

Dear Stanley, if you can immediately begin then you have a really good gift, which unfortunately I don't have: You don't have to waste much time. I'm often annoyed that I haven't even started yet, but I know in advance that at some point the knot will open, and then I write far too much, as I've already reported. What annoys me the most are the mistakes I immediately discover when the essay is published - and then I get very annoyed because I thought I had looked through everything well. Of course you give the essay to others to read, and every now and then they also find mistakes. But it is often the case that when I have corrected all the mistakes that someone has found while reading, then I remember a very important sentence that I had forgotten. And then there is often a mistake. Maybe you feel the same way.

Best, Hein

Hein, yes the mistakes are a pain and it seems unavoidable. I go over mine four times, and it still happens. Of course the usual bad sentences as well. I often regret publishing something too quickly, at other times, to be honest, I just hope the ideas will be what people concentrate on.

It hard ever happens. I think blocks are like traffic jams.....let the mind wander and it will allow the traffic to slowly dissolve. Go for a walk...do sport and clean out your mental closet. Start wondering again and maybe the creative flow will start breathing again.

I think that most writers face such kind of problem according to different reasons. Here, I am talking about myself, when I face this problem, I always use another technique. Firstly, I stop writing and change my way from writing to reading. Sometimes, I need the technique of paraphrasing. Then, I will get my writing ability back and of course after a while. Thanks for your tip Dear Dr. By the way I just wanna tell you something here, I am engaging with my doctorate thesis right now so that I cant write any essay. Thank you for your nice advice Hein Retter

I generally start by writing my ideas as a stream of consciousness. Then, I expand them pretty quickly and only later I arrange sections and arguments in the definitive form. In other words, I don't write my ideas in a good shape from the beginning. Rather, I start with a very rough material to be revised later through several steps of revisions. This takes much time, and sometimes I completely rephrase everything. But I find this method rewarding as you have something "done" from the beginning and, importantly, this prevents me to getting stucked with a blank page and, consequently, it prevents the writer's block!

Davide Serpico Yes, Davide, to pay attention to the "stream of consciousness" - the famous word of William James - is a good entry. It is interesting that the need to begin with the article is suppressed in my consciousness by the motivation to take part in discussion and answer to so many question at RG. Thanks for your idea!

Hein

Marwan Khaleel Yousif

Thanks for your proposals to solve the problem, Marwan. The most successful event to begin to write the text ist the attempt to contradict a statement other people have made and to assert the opposite. Try this, it works!

Best, Hein

Holly B. F. Warren

Thanks for your contribution, Holly, I have read your CV introduction at the moment, and certainly you have not so much problems to write a text, I imagine, because art is a broad field, and when in reality nothing works anymore and all hopes are almost buried, art always finds a way out in the realm of its freedom. In the last years I read many writings of John Dewey. In some respect I have criticized aspect of his philosophy, but one message from him has fruitful effects: The statement: "Have a new experience!" I assume you know his book "art as experience", that's the title of a chapter. In this way also run your suggestions. Have a good time, Hein

Hein Retter

even artists get stuck in traffic jams. Every artist has a specific predilection to a technique or method, concept or theory even when he or she is a multimedia artist. Inspiration can run dry and you loose connection with the link that makes you who you are as an artist. Mind Wandering is risky and challenging but it could help do a bit of spring cleaning ...like opening a window to let fresh air in. Then you "Inspire" and zap..Eureka.

Dewey also mentions the importance of "culture" as in the best environment in which things grow and thrive.

Art as experience has some incredible insights tucked inside.

Go for it.

Holly B. F. Warren

About John Dewey's Aesthetics and his knowledge of music.

I think you know Dewey better than me. Dewey is, of course, read again and again by teachers in the field of art and always shows new thoughts. Maybe you can help me. I don't find any relevant statement in Dewey about the significance of music in art. He mumbles something about rhythm, but I don't find anything about classical music, composers, time styles in Dewey. Once he mentions "Beethoven and Wagner symphonies", but Richard Wagner did not write any symphonies, at least not in his main creative period. An entire area of culture seems to be missing. But perhaps I am mistaken. I don't think he could sing from the sheet like any normal person - if there are a few notes, then you can reproduce them correctly with your voice. That's what children learn in primary school. Well, he probably couldn't do that at all, I think. And play a musical instrument? Could he do that? I don't think so either. Did he at least paint? I don't suppose the only thing that came close to him were poems, and he made some himself when he was once in love. Before we got to know Albert C. Barnes, as far as I know there was no essay or speech by Dewey about aesthetics after 1900. Maybe you know more - or even more connoisseurs of aesthetics proof.

Best, Hein

Hein, in literature the first obstacle for many is form. Many writers give up a project too early when they get obsessed with form. Form entails an audience made up of editors, critics (internal and external) and readers. When any writer becomes confidence of and in their audience they write with ease. I''ve just been dipping into P.G. Wodehouse who wrote thousands of words a day. Not always memorable words, but thousands anyway.

Hi Stanley, you are right, I would have difficulties also to maintain form in any case, in my writings. But my writing block was also caused by the fact that I had to complete my income tax return for the tax office. It's so depressing, filling out these forms and you don't know your way around, every year I start all over again. The reluctance does not create routine and blocks everything else. But now I've done it. Woodhouse is a good hint, in his dry humor he reminds me of Evelyn Waugh, who, however, has a much more drastic language and in most cases seems deadly serious.

Hein Retter

Dewey talks about music in Art as Experience p.245 - 248. He talks about music as sound and as composition. Here he sees it from the theoretical perspective.

The words he uses are tension, struggle, energy, might warning and peaceful meetings. A flow of inspiration and aspiration to communicate and create narratives.

I think that Dewey saw the essence and the dynamics in the arts and collected notes on his extensive research on the art of expression in all fields. He offered a theory of art and the aesthetic experience of union of the learning process through the expressive drive in humans.

I am not sure he was an artist but he could see art as a story to tell.

Dewey has come and gone and has left a strong legacy. There is more to do, more to explore and discover.

As John Berger stated "A story starts when it ends."

Dear Hein

I am reading R.Solso's The Phycology of Art and the evolution of the Conscious Mind.

P.257 "Mozart's music plays sympathetic chords deeply planted in the human mind."

Wander and wonder at the resonance of nature and human ancestral knowledge.

Holly B. F. Warren

Dear Holly, thank you very much for your comments, both are very helpful, I tend often only to see the surface, and I usually don't take the time to go into depth. But you have a good way of communicating something to others, that's done me good.

All the best for you, Hein

Hi Hein

thanks for your kind words and delighted that they have been helpful.

What are you actually struck with? Or is it a research concept you are working on?

Dear Holly, you're asking me what I'm particularly interested in right now. To be honest, the whole week I was busy with my tax return for the tax authorities - an unpleasant task, and perhaps one cause for my writing block. And what else? I have been emeritus for a long time (2004), at RG I started uploading old and newer articles from scattered magazines about 2 years ago, I still do, this week there were 2 articles from handbooks, end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. But also the newest articles, which I mainly published online, come to RG, the coffin for posterity, because nobody is interested in what you wrote 30 or forty years ago. It's just a hobby. However, I still have one or two projects to complete, in which documents from archives play a role, which concern the Nazi period and individual scientists. But the way of releasing such documents, especially when pictures play a role, is in some cases lengthy. I have assigned my texts to 20 projects in RG, with the period 1933-45 playing a major role. At the moment I am logged into the archives of Teachers College at Columbia University, New York, and looking for documents about William H. Kilpatrick, the promoter of the project method, who was one of John Dewey's most loyal followers. I had written quite a lot about Dewey lately, almost everything is uploaded on RG. At first the importance of religion for the young Dewey stood in the foreground. I see Dewey's educational philosophy rather as secular theology, although he had already in his Chicago time separated himself from those beliefs that prove his early sermons at church services of the Students Christian Association. I recently pointed out the extent to which Dewey repressed educational misery and everyday racism against non-whites. It is interesting that Dewey was quite interested in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s in New York, as individual Dewey researchers showed, because he was interested in African art, mediated by A.C. Barnes. But he makes no mention of the important period in "Art as Experience". And the non-white parallel society of America remains unmentioned, especially painful when Dewey wrote about democracy and social participation. The complete edition of the 37-volume writings never mentions the leaders of the early Civil Rights movement (as W.E.B. Du Bois, whom Dewey knew very well, did). For me, Dewey is a very contradictory time frame.

I am historically connected to England not only through philosophy, but also through music. I once asked on RG why the UK hardly produced any world-class musicians of its own in the Baroque and Classical periods, except Purcell in the 17th century (in the 19th century some Elgar and then in the 20th century perhaps Benjamin Britten). The early English music (late Renaissance) knew important own musicians, like Byrd, Morley or John Dowland. I know their music well because I played them myself (lute or guitar and viola da gamba). From Shakespeare's "How you like it" there is the lyrics to "It was a lover and his lass", in the setting as a song with a rather difficult to play accompaniment on the guitar (at Morley's time it was of course the lute, written in tablature), but you can also listen to Morley's four-voice chorus to "It was a lover" several times from English school choirs on Youtube, as well as the songs of Dowland, whose "Flow, my Tears" had international fame after all. Because the Gambenkonsort often plays 5-part dance suites, I used to be interested in the dances of England (not to forget: Scotland) in the 16th to 18th centuries - some of them were recorded by the court in France by Louis XVI, who was an enthusiastic dancer. The invention of the dance writing, which made a written passing on possible, happened at the end of the 17th century. I find the history of England in the 17th century the most interesting, because of the religious conflicts and the power struggle between the Stuart kings and the parliament, these are historical steps in the direction of the liberal and democratic ideas in Europe, yet a time full of cruelty and injustice.

Fascinating, thanks!

Well....

Tax return can put a block in an obvious way if you are a person of such knowledge and thriving in academic interests.

You have so much to say and write about that maybe you don't know where to start......I would start at the end..."A story starts when it ends"

Just I have read my private hobby stories above, once more: sorry, there are some writing and memory errors: Not Louis XVI, but Louis XIV was the great dancer; not "What you will" but "As you like it", from Shakespeare, contents the text of the song "It was a lover and his lass", I recommend to hear it, on youtube - thanks.

Hein Retter

Dear Hein

mistakes are no mistakes at all but revelations. You still remain a great person.

How is inspiration doing????

In Arabic literature we have an expression called "poets' of ride" in the sense that the poet or writer needs something like a mode of transport that enables him to write, which is explained by inspiration

regards

Losing the ability to produce new work, or experiencing a creative slowdown are circumstances that are familiar to most writers. All writing problems are psychological problems. When a writer gets stuck , s/he should get away from the desk and try to do something different such as taking a walk, listening to ­music, meditating , exercising, etc. Writing blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. Consequently, writers should always write their first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

I think that here comes the role of brainstorming process.We think deeply about what we are going to write about.Then,we jet down ideas quickly in the paper just to not forget any single idea and we get a kind of a plan that will help. This way is rewarding as you have something "done" from the beginning and, importantly, this will prevent you from getting stucked with a blank page !