Most of us at one point or another have heard about writer's block. The term is used for writers who can't seem to find anything to write about. We just sit there staring at a blank piece of paper for hours stuck and unable to go any further. I was stuck for years with this condition. The ideas were there until I was looking at the paper and then nothing ever happened. I have finally figured out what caused this, fear.
For all artists there is a part of us that wants to do something that is groundbreaking. We want to be the next big name and have everyone singing our praises, but at the same time this is terrifying. The what if's start to build up in our minds. What if I really don't know how to write, but don't know it? What if this is really not what I was meant to do? What if no one likes my ideas? What if I can never finish this story? When we allow these what if's to pile up on us we run into writer's block. Our brain is churning so much trying to come up with "THE" story that we can't write any story.
While I don't really know if I'll be a big hit, I know that I have to write. Those years that I spent trapped in writer's block were excruciatingly painful. I know that this probably sounds funny to anyone who hasn't been through it, but I have a need to write. I was writing when I was a kid, when I was a teen, even when I was an adult and the points in my life where I was the most depressed were times when I couldn't express myself in words. Writing is good for my soul, it makes me feel real, alive and complete. This is why I know now that for the good or the bad I am a writer. I'm sure that I have a lot to learn about writing and what is expected of writers but I look forward to learning it. I had forgotten how good it felt to mold something out of nothing, to make words form a picture in my head that I could share with other people.
The hardest thing for me to overcome has always been the possibility of failure. There's that little voice in the back of my head saying that my work isn't good enough. It tells me that I haven't created an epic book series so therefore I must be broken. I have listened to that voice for far too long and have decided that if writing gets me nothing in the long run other than the feeling of being alive again it's worth it. Now comes the hard part, deciding to share my work with others. I have created accounts in online writing communities before ( my favorite of which is WritersCafe.org ) but I'm always afraid to share something until it's finished. I have problems with sharing something that I don't think is good yet. I'm going try overcoming that fear here by sharing my whole process and not just the finished work. So, here we go:
I usually find myself being struck my inspiration. I don't even know how to explain it, but I've found that the more time I spend looking for ideas the more ideas come to me. In fact I often find that I end up with too many ideas rattling around in my head at once. For me it seems that the best way for me to write is just to start writing. I'm very much a seat of my pants kind of writer. I'll have a general idea of what I want to do, but I'm usually most proud of the things that weren't in the plan. The details and sub-plots that seem to flush things out and make them more realistic.
Descriptions are like things in real life when they are too perfect they feel fake. Any real person, place or thing has it's good and bad parts to it. Another thing to keep in mind is that the scariest villains are also those who have some good in them or that can appear to be good. If they're just pure evil they can be written off as things that don't exist because we're all a mixture of different things in our lives.
One of the pieces that I have always been the most proud of was a simple description assignment for high school English. The assignment was to describe a road in detail. I ended up with a dirt path in the woods with a magical feel in the air. I would have been a perfect description for a fairy tale. It came alive at my fingertips. I've long since lost this piece, but the feeling of accomplishment I felt as I took the reader along with me on the journey to imagination was something I'll never forget.
The task that I've set for myself today then is to start with description. My goal is to share it with the world tomorrow, we'll see if I can do it.
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