I'm lying in bed, my laptop resting on my legs, and I'm completely blank. I'm thinking how hard it is to write something with a deadline. I'm thinking of my friend Rachel that writes something almost every other day, and always manages to crack me up. I could never be a writer! It's so much easier to talk about food, share recipes and/or if inspired, write about something that's bothering me, or something that's on my mind....but to write something with a deadline, feeling the pressure of having to write and not knowing what to write about is just too much! Writer's block, now I get it!
With mid-life crisis going on, at one point in time in between my struggle of trying to figure out whether I should go back to school of not, and if so, what would be the best thing to study, I actually considered going into journalism...I thought it would be pretty cool to write for a magazine, have a weekly column and just spill my guts out on anything that comes to mind. Now that I've had a taste of my own "column" and can hardly get myself to write once a week and with really no deadline, but my own, I'm stressed!
They say practice makes perfect...maybe it's just a matter of sitting down, making it a habit of sitting in front of the computer and just write, write and write.
I saw this movie the other day "Stranger than Fiction", it's about this guy that's a bit of a loner, lives alone, is very methodical and leads a monotonous work-eat-sleep life. One day, while brushing his teeth, he hears this voice narrating his life...from that point on, everyday, regardless of what he's doing, he can hear this voice narrating every step he takes, every page he turns, every breath he takes. Turns out, there actually is a writer, that's writing this book and she's narrating this story based on his life, without knowing him.....like the title says, stranger than fiction.
All this to say, that the writer was having writer's block, trying to figure out how to kill this character. In her stories, always, the main character died, and this one would not be different, but she couldn't figure out how to kill him. I'm not going to narrate the whole story, just wanted to make a point on writer's block.
So, the question is this, do writers constantly think about what their next piece will be on/about? or do they just sit in front of the computer and then all of a sudden, start typing away, words flowing naturally, as easily as air flowing, letting us breath? All week I've been trying to think about something to write and nothing has come to mind, nothing interesting or worth sharing anyway.
Any suggestions on defrosting a writer's block?
1 comment:
I am cracking up because, guess what the title of MY next post was going to be? Yup. It IS hard to write - and people don't realize that until they do it themselves. But I was thinking that maybe if I had a topic, like cooking or knitting, it would be easier to post more regularly because you'd have something to show/talk about. Ah well. I guess it's hard either way, then. And the answer is kind of a little of both - you ARE always writing (thinking up things in your head) and if you sit your butt down to write, sometimes it comes, too. (As you must have seen, because you wrote an entire post about it!) BTW, I loved that movie, in it's weird way.
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