On Writing #1 · 5:51am Dec 9th, 2016
Damn man.
Have you ever had that struggle where you're swimming in ideas, eyeball deep in them and yet can't put anything down on paper?
Writing didn't used to be this hard, for me. I don't know what happened, but my Gdocs is littered with half finished ideas and starts and scenes. And they're all freaking good, too! Like I read them and I think to myself "damn I'm a glorious bastard for having wrote this. Look at that turn of phrase. God I'm clever, and so elegantly descriptive! And---"
...Well, I go on for a while.
But then I reach the end, that part where I got stuck, and just... nothing. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to write. I hunger for it, but something just shuts it off.
Writing is work now, I thought it was always work but this is just soul-sucking. Yanno, back in college, in my prime, I would write until the pads of my fingers lost sensitivity. Hell, "Just Give Me a Reason" was done--like done-done wham bam thank you ma'am edited and everything-- in... oh, about three hours. My buddy Lion and I were casually discussing a competition he was gonna enter, and he threw the premise of Dash and Rare at the spa at me sort of half-heartedly. I, equally unenthusiastic, suggested he make some changes to it. He didn't like my suggestion so I took it myself and typed that shit out and threw it up. Fuck it, right?
Writing was... I don't know. Just... easier in an unexplainable way. I think maybe my problem is that I make it more complicated for myself. Because when I write, I edit and perfect and re-read re-read re-read along the way. I am a wordsmith till the day I die, and I need to be more of a storyteller. Or I need to be a storyteller first, and then go back and be a good little wordsmith and tidy my shit up until it's so squeaky clean I can see my fucking face in it.
But how does one break the fundamental type of writer they have become?
...Shit don't look at me. I've got no fucking clue.
Welcome to the club, man. I've been in a bit of a slump for a few months now, although as of this week it's starting to look like I might finally be getting out of it. I'm still slow, but at least I'm writing things again.
My suggestion would be to go back and read what you've already written. not the blurbs you've done and can't finish, but the stories already completed and posted. Remind yourself of what you like to do. It seems to be working for me. Hope it helps you too.