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What's a good way to get better at writing?
I kind of suck at it, and this is troubling me. I'm a working academic, and sitting on a growing cache of results that I can't get out because (outside of some unpredictable periods where the chemical stars in my brain align just right or something) I tend to stare down the same paragraph for two hours and finally squeeze out, word by painful word, something that sounds like the ramblings of a schizophrenic with aphasia, and then feel so drained that I will viscerally fear opening vim again for a week or two. "Professional issues" is an easy sell as far as evidence that something must be done goes, but even outside that, there are so many things - posts, stories, explanations - that I wish I could write but can't. The circumstance that every so often, this problem briefly just goes away and I can in fact vomit out several pages that do in fact hold up even if I look at them again later, just makes my problem all the more frustrating - it feels like it's not like there is something I just lack (and therefore could obtain, making the problem go away), but rather that the necessary circuitry is there but defective.
It sounds like you can write, you just find it very difficult and unpleasant. Which is not unusual, since I have heard this comment from many people.
That sounds more like that your circuitry is functional, but you have problems with environment or mood that interfere. That's good because you can control your environment and your mood (to an extent). Think back to those times when you succeeded in writing and think about whether your situation was different, or maybe you did something immediately beforehand that put you in the right state. Having a pre-writing ritual can help deal with procrastination and also put you in the writing mood, even if it's as simple as taking a walk or talking to a particular person.
No particular pattern I see in environment. The one mood that seems to most frequently help is panic, as induced by a looming deadline that I can't houdini myself out of, but even that is sufficiently inconsistent that the usual tricks with commitment devices and bets and what-not have too much footbullet nature.
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