I've never had writer's block, which of course will no doubt jinx the crap out of me and cause me to have the mother of all cases.

I've never really had writer's block. I get genre block. It's been a little more than a year since I've been able to write a new poem, but I've finished two screenplays in that time. I've started a new screenplay which I can't finish, but in the time I've been working on it, I've finished a manuscript of essays. I've decided it's best to just let the brain do what the brain's gonna do.

I did stop writing entirely for nine years, but that wasn't blockage; that was raging screaming assholes in the publishing industry (ahem, sorry)

Don't apologize. I can feel your pain, and then some.

Another writing "trick" that works for some people is to write the first draft on the computer, then do a round of editing on the hard copy and then type it all again into the computer. The reason being is a) then it goes through the forebrain all over again, and b) the writer then has a motive to cut cut cut to give themselves less typing to do.

I've sometimes resorted to doing this, but it's also because my hard-copy edits tend to bleed red so profusely, move clauses from one end of the sentence to another, move sentences from the middle of one paragraph to another, move paragraphs around, et cetera that it is actually easier just to rekey it.

connie, I expect you're quite right. I don't worry that much about plot though - as my editor says, plot is the easiest thing to go back and fix.

Mine is wanting to strangle characters. Would she do that? Why does this read so bloody stilted? Goddamnit, this has to happen but it makes him look like a moron if he does it.

So I cheat. I send the draft to a bunch of people and say hey, all, um, does this read weird and if so, why?

Then everyone gets thanks in the acknowledgements page.

write the first draft on the computer, then do a round of editing on the hard copy and then type it all again into the computer

There's an Australian author who does this, but here's the key issue -- do you delete the first on-computer draft? I'd have to take a deep breath before I did that and make sure everything was there in the printout...

Another writing "trick" that works for some people is to write the first draft on the computer, then do a round of editing on the hard copy and then type it all again into the computer. The reason being is a) then it goes through the forebrain all over again, and b) the writer then has a motive to cut cut cut to give themselves less typing to do.

yes and yes and yes. Mine is a "read-aloud" version: I find reading it aloud from the screen is nowhere near as revealing and effective as reading it off paper.

eta addendum: I don't retype everything. No way - again, multiple sclerosis is very unforgiving on the hands. And if I was remotely uncertain about the changes, no deleting either. Save a Version 1/Version 2 to disc, would seem to be sensible.

Mine is wanting to strangle characters. Would she do that? Why does this read so bloody stilted? Goddamnit, this has to happen but it makes him look like a moron if he does it.

Sometimes people are bloody morons. I often have the opposite problem, as in, I don't at first let characters make mistakes, which is sometimes neccesary for them to do.

Victor, nononono. Not as in "he'll look unintelligent if he does that". More like "having this particular character do this is so completely not this character that he'll look as though his brains suddenly leaked out his ears if he does that."

Consistency. ALL my characters make mistakes. In fact, I insist on it.

My few attempts at Original Fiction involve a lot of coffee drinking. And ennui. And basically not a hell of a lot of plot, just angst.

The horror.

Err. This may be because most of the stuff was written a decade ago.

Deleting the first draft file before rekeying would pretty much be X-Treme Writing for me -- I would live in fear that just this once the first draft would have a sentence or image or piece of dialogue that someday I might want to go back to.

Besides, I figure I've got to allow my future Christopher Tolkien to have something to publish, right? :-)

Mine is wanting to strangle characters. Would she do that?

I've always lumped that in under plot. I need certain people to get to certain places, and when they drag their feet I want to kick them. If they're resisting, either there's something illogical in the plot or in them.