Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "writer-s-block"

It's hard to write cyberpunk.

Or any science fiction at all, for that matter, but cyberpunk's what I'm currently writing so it's the most relevant bit for this. It doesn't flow out of me as fantasy does: I keep having longer breaks, I constantly second-guess what I'm putting down to paper, my mind drifts to other things, and in the end I get out only somewhere around two thousand words a day at most. Really hard to obsess over, and feels a lot more like work.

A big part of it, I think, is the relative lack of works - books, comics, video games, films - to find inspiration out of. There's just so much more fantasy stuff available than scifi: I have to go actively looking for the latter, where I just keep stumbling at the former by accident - and then I read them and end up getting a couple ideas for some really great fantasy novels that I can't wait to get to writing. My head ends up bursting with all the wrong sort of thoughts. My focus is where it shouldn't be.

I feel like it's a sort of a vicious cycle. There's more fantasy than scifi - and so people get more excited by fantasy, and inspired to write more fantasy, and make the whole problem worse. A dark and nigh-inescapable mire of magic and dragons and wonder, spitting out more of the same, growing bigger and stickier with each new work of fantasy. The scifi equivalent is more like a puddle that you have to actually go looking for, and if you leave you will get lost and have a difficult time coming back... and the whole time you risk being swallowed by the great big fantasy swamp. You have to work a lot harder for that. Or, maybe it's just me and I'm overthinking the whole thing.

Right now I want to write about pirates.

You ever had one of those days where you struggle to write anything at all, all day long? Like you have no idea what happens next, or how you're going to tell whatever happens, or anything? And then suddenly something just clicks and you power through five thousand words in as many hours?

It's one of the best feelings I ever get as an author - easily in the top five. I think it might be my equivalent of the thing Arnold Schwarzenegger said about pumping iron (if you don't get it, don't ask).

Just happened to me.

That's all. Carry on.

This is a new low. Once, not even that long ago, I could finish an entire novel in a month and a half. Now look at me.

I blame a combination of awful news from all over the world, leading to a slump of depression and useless escapist fantasies; and being too busy with a dozen other matters to get anything done. Maybe I should not have tried to read over seven hundred books a year: just because I can do something doesn't mean I should.

Ah, well. I'll get over it.

They just come out, unwanted and unbidden, in the thousands, if not millions. Every few minutes there's another one of the little bastards. Like the Richard Madoc bloke.



But unlike him, I never got to write even a single good novel before this started, and I never did anything to warrant a dream-god laying a curse on me.

...Did I?

And sometimes one sticks for a little longer. Nags at me and bothers me and takes up space and eats up all the other little ideas. I feel at peace for a moment. I feel like I have a purpose again. Almost without realizing, I start building it up. Or maybe it builds itself. I don't even know.

I think it could make for a blog post. Something to idly muse about, jot down some random ramblings, as I do right now.

Then it grows, and I think it could make for an actual story. I think people might want to read it. I even think I could sell it.

Then it grows too much and I start to see the cracks. I see the bloat, the fat and water and hot air, with no muscle, no substance. The idea could not sustain anything more, after all: now it's a heart that beats hot and heavy and shriveled to sustain what it can not.

And most importantly, the big question: who would ever care?

I've had better ideas, after all. I've written entire stories about them, whole books. And no one cared about those either. Why should this be different? How can that which is worse do better than the better?



Then it collapses. It dies. It goes away. I can do nothing with it anymore. Not a story, not a blog post, not even talk about it to friends. It's gone.

Then, repeat.

Hey, I did get a blog post about it. A blog post about blog posts. I guess that's better than nothing.