‘block’ of writers

my wife gave me a MasterClass subscription as a gift. the ‘writing categories’ sparked my interest. so much so, i’ve taken classes from Malcolm Gladwell. Aaron Sorkin, Neil Gaiman, Salman Rushdie, James Patterson, Amy Tan, and Shonda Rhimes. i’m currently taking Margaret Atwood’s offering. and while they are all ‘different’, there seem to be ‘common threads’:

• practice regularly and rewrite outputs. write everyday to develop your skill. you usually won’t get it right initially (and most of the time you will have to settle for ‘good enough’ – remember the expression: “perfect is the enemy of good”). revise what you have, but you’ve got to ‘finish’ to make this exercise ‘more robust.’ in the beginning, it’ only natural to keep drafts to yourself until ‘sufficient iterations of quality assurance (one technique is to read it out loud)’ grants you enough confidence to share. but to move it forward, you’l need someone (or a ‘small group’) you trust and ask what isn’t understood – it’s about getting ‘what’ feedback and not ‘how to fix it’: most ‘problem-solving’ originates from the writer and not from the reader based on past occurrences. note that rejection is part of the process: it can be about finding the ‘right publisher (or production company as the case may be) at the right time’,’
• research broadly. reading (watching, listening, or browsing as the case may be) widely doesn’t only expose you to different ‘use-cases/patterns’ or to ‘best practices’, but affords you ‘connection’ (or what Gaiman refers to as confluence) of separate (and largely considered ‘unrelated’) disciplines and can provide ‘unexplored’ points of view. and while ‘purposeful’ domain/subject matter expertise gives your work the requisite credence, it is also sometimes about ‘random/’opportunistic’ learnings unassigned to a specific use but ‘filed away’ just in case – this, sometimes, includes ‘darlings’ you’ve edited out you consider ‘good’, but ‘incongruous’ with your present task’ ,
• finding your voice. seek what they sought and refrain from imitations or impressions. they talk about what has worked for them but they aren’t ‘prescriptive’ and instead encourage you to try then pick and choose what seems right for you given your own experience. at the start, you can look at and ’emulate what other writers have done so you might get a ‘sense of how things are done’ but only do this as a ‘stepping stone’ in your own ‘evolution’. learn the rules so you can intentionally break them to advance the story and
• perform thought experiments. do exercises like ‘interrupting what’s expected, changing the narration (e.g. character, person voice, etc.). Anything that ‘disrupts the pattern: it’s not just sometimes about ‘pushing the envelope’ ,but ‘colouring outside the lines.’ it can be about taking the ‘mundane’, and viewing it through an ‘unexpected’ lens.

this is by no means a comprehensive list: as these are an attempt at a synthesis of take-aways’ – if you think there are things i’ve inadvertently overlooked or could’ve expressed clearer, kindly share these.