Tales of a frustrated writer
Jan 5th, 2006 by Accidental Thinker
I haven’t a creative bone in my body, apparently. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing some fiction, but every time I sit down at the computer, I stare and stare and stare at the blank page on the screen. I’ve wasted a lot of time staring at this infernal blank screen. I don’t even have a glimmer of an idea. My style seems to be fairly well suited to blogging, but anything beyond that, and I am at a loss. The actual writing part would probably go fine, if only I could seize on the right idea that I could develop enough to glean an actual story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But there are no ideas. Not even bad ones.
My thought process goes something like this…
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That’s it. Dead silence in my brain. My esteemed gray matter always seems to fail me when I am counting on it for ideas and words. It’s in there, somewhere, I know it is. It’s just being held hostage or something. Ahhhh, back to the drawing board.
Wow…I can relate to that feeling. You’re very creative. It will come back to you. The stress of the holidays, among other things, can make it difficult to focus.
Write when the muse strikes you, otherwise it will sound forced and contrived!
If it hasn’t come yet, then you’re not ready 🙂
And I’d agree with wordwhiz, give it some time, after the holidays and all.
Good luck!!
The words will come to you, just sit back and relax… (easy to say, huh?)
Have a good day!
I sure do feel your pain on that! My creativity comes in spurts, and if I’m not near the keyboard where I can write, it’s gone..Poof!
Hey! Give me back my brain!
On second thought, never mind…
Oh, boy! I could talk about this for hours. But if I did, I’d have to charge you a lot of money. And you still wouldn’t write. So…
Just write. Anything. A note to your phone company…a letter to mom…pretend you’re conversing with the meter reader…pretend you’re Jesus: forgive somebody…give the mayor a piece of your mind…re-write a commercial or an ad…
Later, you can assign yourself a certain number of words.
Look for a writers’ group in your area to help compost the brain. (I’m going to one tonight.) BTW, those fictional memory things that are going around are neat little places to practice. See if you can find some–like at Wordwhiz’s place. They’ll help get the juices squoze out of you.
Practice, practice, practice.
I believe in you.
And one last thing: I wouldn’t be surprised if you plagiarized this post from one of my many belly aches! Watch it!
I’m so with you here… my creative juices sound suspiciously similar to an emergency broadcast beacon…
mg
😉
It’s always good to start with:
It was a cold and rainy night….
Or once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered week and weary …. ;~)
Start with “Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I was a little girl…before my sex change operation.” HaHa
I have lots of ideas, it’s getting them on paper in readable form that’s my problem.
You can’t force it. Just write what you feel like writing for now. One day something odd will happen and your mind will take over and you’ll have your fiction story in a matter of hours. 🙂
Have a great weekend!
Lois Lane