Augh! I hate it....My muse has been dead for over a month now and I can't seem to be able to get any new ideas. I've tried writing, but no imagination comes. T_T Anyone else have this for more than a month?
I'm starting to think something's wrong here...

relax for a bit, then come back to it.

Oh, I've gone months without any new ideas. Take a break, yeah. Try working on a different project or something.

No. In all of my years of writing, I have never run out of ideas. In fact, I have notebooks full of ideas, more than I will ever be able to write, and they just keep coming.

Am I special? Not at all. Ideas are all around you; the trick is learning to be receptive to them, and learning to create ideas from what you see, hear and feel.

If you wait around for ideas to hit, you won't get very far. Part of being a writer is going looking for ideas. Your "muse" is just the name for your creativity. The rest is all work. You need to train your brain to see the potential in everything.

There are a couple of writing exercises you can do to work on this.

1. Newspaper stories.
Get the local newspaper and pick 5 stories at random (or, choose interesting stories. There are plenty there). Read each article through, then let your imagination go to work. Who are the main characters in the story? If no-one is mentioned, think about who would be most affected by the events described, and develop them as a person. Think about the driving force behind the events. Develop villains and their motivations. Write down repercussions, and details what would happen next. You will probably struggle at the start, but with practice, you can rip out a page or two of detail in no time, from any story.

2. Root cause analysis
This is an old auditor's trick, but works just as well for fiction. If you are stuck on a character's motivation, or a plot point, or a scene, just ask "Why?". Write down the answer. Then ask "why" about your answer. Do that five times. And if you answer "just because" or "I don't know", then hang up your pencil and take up scrapbooking. Seriously.

3. The boredom technique.
This one is guaranteed to work, but you need a bit of discipline. If you really, really can't get words on the page, do the following.

- take a blank notepad and pen
- go sit in a room, facing the wall. No radio, no TV in the background, no computer, no laptop, no books.
- sit there until your brain goes crazy. When it starts talking to you, write down whatever it says, even if it's mean and nasty. Just keep writing. Feel free to ask it questions (write them down) and write answers. Keep going. At some point the floodgates will open. When this happens, just start writing your current project, on the same page. Don't stop. Don't think. Just write. Caps are ok, so is swearing.

4. The indispensable advice.
WRITE EVERY DAY. Did you get that? EVERY DAY. NO MATTER WHAT. It can be novels, ideas, worldbuilding, characters, blog posts (as long as there is thought involved, and it's not just "I can't write today"), letters to your mother (assuming they are a couple of pages). It doesn't matter if it's drek. It doesn't matter if no-one sees it but you. But you NEED THOSE WORDS.

The more you write, the more your subconscious (your muse!) gets used to working, and the more it will throw at you. That barren wasteland of thought will suddenly become a fertile field, ripe with potential.

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Hey, thanks for all your help! It's not that I don't get any ideas, it's just that I can't seem to get the will to write. The same thing is going for my piano.
I'm getting plenty of ideas. (THe whole "muse" thing was an idea of my friend's. ^^; Granted I probably still don't understand the expressions all the way. Then I proably should stop using it. God I'm pathetic today. *sigh*)
Anyway, thanks again. ^^

I have been in the same mood where I will sometimes sit and stare at the page in front of me without any idea of how to get started.

If you've found that you've lost the will to write, then I agree on leaving your current project for a bit. Put it down and think on other things. Listen to music, read, do other things that get your mind off of things.

But, don't ever stop writing. Keep your writing flowing, but just on other things. Take a blank page and pick something, anything, the first thing that hits your mind and write about it. Let your thoughts pour out onto the page and just write what your actively thinking. You'll find that you will write a lot more than you think you will. Sometimes, it will only take a simple scrap of your inner thoughts that spark's that light of inspiration once more.

Good luck.

If you are simply in need of ideas, try and go do the duel pieces, they have worked wonders for me in the past. Or try and come up with new ones. We need new ones!

(and when are you guys going to start duelling? It used to be a main feature of our site!)

I think the issue with the official duels was that they just dragged on. We didn't get many votes, and the ones we did get simply trickled in off and on.

The unofficial ones, well, the old duelers are all involved in more serious stuff, and the new members I think miss the point of that part. I'll try and post more there.

A duel doesn't even have to be against someone else. It is an exercise to challenge yourself and grow as a writer. Pick one of the starter topics and show off what you are capable of doing. Voting and "a winner" is not always necessary. Use it as a tool to flex your writing muscles.

I think I'll do one soon myself.

It also might help to have separate spaces for the Challenges, and the casual duels. It gets confusing when they are all mixed up.

Dragontrove, you can have my muse. I believe she is currently vacationing in Italy with some guy named Sergio. She checks in every so often and leaves a small bag of idea seeds, but she's quite the unreliable, jet-setting witch. If she ever comes home to stay, I'll send her on over.

Um.......thx? ^^;