I did have someone once say to me: a cartoon, on the World Trade Organisation, you have fifteen minutes - and make it funny. World Trade Organisation? Who here is up on the latest exciting adventures of the WTO? I do know someone who is, but he gets paid an awful lot of money and he's Canadian. As there is no set time table to ff I would suppose it gives people leeway to take it at their own pace, but deadlines are a good incentive - and I love it when they give you those prompt plot bunny things. We must have a few people who have been doing the current festivals to ask.

I love to do short one-shots, and yet what am I writing? A big chunk of a collective effort that now clocks in at well over 90,000 words. Which of course is why I'm not going anywhere near the BigBang or any other challenges. This current project is really my only experience with writing for a deadline, since we're on a pretty brutal posting schedule. It's been interesting. Sometimes the pressure causes me to think on my feet and get things done. Other times it's paralyzing. If it were one or two of us instead of four, we'd never be able to keep up this pace. Never.

Ooh! House/ Nero Wolfe! I'm not really into Nero Wolfe as much as the rest of my family is (they watch it ALL. THE. TIME.) but I'd totally be interested to see how you put the two fandoms together. I'm doing bigbang too, but for another fandom. I had no idea such a thing existed until after House's deadline had passed. :)

TrooperCam is absolutely correct that writers's block=writer's exhaustion. In the ten years I worked as a newspaper reporter, I finished exactly one short story. I had lots of ideas but the creativity had been sucked out by my job. I could put one word in front of another and turn out something where the plot went from Point A to Point B, but the writing completely lacked any snap or spark. Although I can write fic on a deadline, I hate doing it and once summed the whole process up to my beta-reader as "Must write, even though it's shite." Maybe it's the sheer terror of possibly missing a deadline, but I wind up writing far more stuff that will ultimately be edited out than if I was writing at my own pace.

I also like to blame, at least in my case, taking composition lessons. I started out being able to write music, stories, poetry, but then had a pair of professors that just killed the love of writing for me. One forced me to ignore the inner voice where my writing really stemmed from while the other forced me to write quantitatively as opposed to writing for quality. Even though the lessons helped me become someone who can also write quickly, it has lost a lot of flair and depth. Any advice from you seasoned writers as to how to get that back?

All I can tell you is that I write a lot -- in volume -- for the news biz. But writing fic allows me to tap into a different style of writing. So even if I wrote all day long for work, I'll come home and it feels like a completely different activity when I grab my personal laptop.

Sometimes changing the mechanics of getting it down on the page will help. I find my style becomes more fluid and lyrical if I write in long hand. I'll jot down things that occur to me and don't worry too much about punctuation. Later when I transcribe it to the laptop, I'll clean it up a bit, but the poetic style remains.

Consider yourself as having just performed a cheerleading service for me Yay! Shish Koom Bah and all that good stuff!

I don't know how you can feel like writing, yet be unable to write. Can this be applied to any other hobby or pursuit? I feel like cooking, but I'm unable to cook? It just makes no sense to me. If you don't want to write, don't write. Why say you are 'blocked' when the simple fact is you just don't feel like writing? If you wanted to write, you'd write. I don't compare it to the Yips. That's self-doubt, not inability to work. Writer's block is not doubting yourself, writing crap, or second-guessing. It's inability to work: you can't write. If you can't write, why would you want to? Wait until the desire returns. I never sit down to write unless I know exactly how the story will end - I have it all mapped out before I start writing. Maybe that's why I don't experience writer's block. If I don't know where the story's going, I shouldn't be at my keyboard. If I am, then I'm just typing, not writing. I don't know about music and painting, since I'm not particularly fond of pursuing those arts. But I imagine if you are a professional writer working on short deadlines, you get over your writer's block so you can collect a paycheck. Writer's block is not much of an excuse for not meeting deadlines. It may be difficult but that's not the same as impossible. I don't believe I've been blessed with a magical immunity to writer's block. I just don't write when I don't feel like writing and I don't panic when I don't feel like writing. Maybe what I call "don't feel like writing" is known as writer's block to the rest of the world.

I'd beware of assuming that just because you've never had writer's block that it doesn't exist. It is real and has been noted for some centuries. You can find an article in The New Yorker on writer's block and people who have had it -- and not had it -- here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/14/040614fa_fact For many people, it's a question of not knowing precisely how to solve a plot issue -- or too many options on avenues to take with a plot. In "The Wonder Boys" it's interesting that everyone assumes the writer can't write, when in fact he's incapable of stopping. He simply can't finish his next novel. I don't think that you have to have everything plotted out in order to avoid being blocked. I've only written two fics that were even moderately plotted and sketched out. Everything else I've written was on the fly. I had a few concepts in my head, but I enjoy the organic growth of the story and seeing where it will lead. As I've mentioned before, in "Tracking Time" the story took on a life of its own once I ignored my plans for the next chapter and instead gave in when Wilson seemed to whisper in my head that no one had told about House's infarction from his point of view. I had planned to not even write about the infarction, since the show covered it in "Three Stories."

Well, for every article about the realities of writer's block, there is a corresponding article explaining why it's just a myth. I suppose it's a matter of personal judgement and of course a person who has never experienced it will not believe it exists. I guess, like the New Yorker article says, I don't believe in it because I don't believe in any sort of external Muse. It's all from within and no divine inspiration or certain kind of feeling will make me want to write. It all starts with an idea. I'm just lucky, I guess, because I've never had writer's block. Knock on wood.

I never have my stories totally mapped out before writing. I have an idea, and start writing, and then get stuck, and stop and do something else (or write on my endless stories-just-to-amuse-myself) and it can take quite some time before I continue, usually because I just have no ending, or no beginning, or no middle. So maybe that's writer's block? I can try and squeeze it out, I suppose, but I much rather wait until a good idea hits me, precisely because it's not like I'm writing for a living. This, of course, means it always takes me ages to finish a story, but I don't mind that too much. It also means the story sometimes takes a turn I never expected when I started writing, which is usually good (and sometimes very bad).