(no subject)

[koganbot]

From Luc's blog:

Picking up a copy of Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller or George Ade's Fables in Slang or Chester Himes's Blind Man With a Pistol and leafing through it for five minutes helps restore my writing style when it has gone stale.

So, what works for you when your writing goes stale? (Basically, I've tried everything, and nothing works for me when my writing goes stale; I just have to write through it and try not to let my own staleness shut me down. Reading other writers in their freshness just makes me feel that I'm worse in comparison. I do read Otis Ferguson to try to restore myself to good humor, however.)

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> So, what works for you when your writing goes stale?

Sulkily returning to whatever mindless spreadsheet I should be doing instead :(

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

My writing started stale and has stayed that way whoever I read, tragically.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Reading something that pisses me off does wonders. Even if I later cut the pissed-off parts, it tends to get me moving on a subject that's been percolating. Of course, I am a blogger.

Reading really good writing tends to just make me self-conscious and intimidated. Thank god I'm in academia!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Ditto dickmalone, good writing is intimidating -- and usually what I consider good writing has little to do with how I write (Nabokov's got style to spare, but when and why would I want to write like him?) -- bad ideas are rant-inducing (but usually don't produce any great insight, though they often lead to trains of thought that do yield some insight)...good ideas are tricky, because it's hard not to just swipe them while yer prose stays dull.

Humor works for me, possibly in a journalistic vein, heavy on caricature -- Tom Sharpe and Carl Hiaasen can usually incite me to actually want to write, even if I don't know what about; in part it's because their flaws as writers are pretty evident -- no "sneaking suspicion" if something isn't working -- and, importantly, the flaws don't make it any less funny.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

I really like Luc's blog. Must catch up.