Oct 14 2008
Writer’s Block and other random thoughts
Isn’t that just the most wonderful thing to deal with? I’ve been struggling with it for the past few months. Either I’ve been lacking the drive, but have the emotions, or have the drive and lack the emotional connection. Not to mention school and my job are taking up all of my time. But we’re at the half way point in the semester, so we’ll have to wait and see how things unfold.
Unfortunately, the only cure I happen to have for writer’s block is a good cup of joe. That, or walking around listening to a playlist I put together to represent one of my stories (in fact it’s for the only one I’m writing with the intentions of publishing). The playlist thing only works half the time though. 
Sometimes though just day to day life gives me an idea. Everything is a story. maybe not an intersting one, but it’s a story. In a drama class I took, my teacher liked referencing a quote from Alfred Hitchcock, “Theatre is life with all the boring parts cut out.” I view writing as the same. You’re not going to read a story and hear every trip to the bathroom, every sneeze, every lazy Sunday, or every dilemma of deciding what to wear. While those ARE all part of life, it’s not anything we’re interested in reading. Those are just givens that everyone knows happens once in a while. The trip to the bathroom is only important if it’s because they’re escaping a conflict, or the sneeze if it gains the attention of a stranger that leads to a conversation, or the lazy Sunday follows up a Saturday of partying. And the wardrobe malfunction? The more important part is WHY they’re picky about their dress in the first place. But really, unless any of those reasons exists, I don’t really need to hear about every little detail.
Well I guess this is more stream of consciousness than I originally anticipated. Ah well.
I just find the balance between the emotional drive and the will power to do any work interesting. Life can wear on one or both factors, and sometimes it’s hard to work when one of them was lacking. With a lack of emotion, writing becomes mechanical; Step 1, Step 2, Step 3. With a lack of drive, it’s simply a bunch of adjectives on a page describing nothing. While the words are pretty, they serve no purpose other than maximizing your word count.
All I can ever think to do is to keep going. It took Elizabeth Kostova 10 years to write “The Historian”. I’m sure she struggled with writer’s block, and researching historical facts so her stories about Dracula, while fictious, sound credible. Same with Dan Brown and “The Da Vinci Code”. I don’t know if that book took him 10 years, but look at everything he would’ve had to have put together to all of a sudden, bam, he’s working with the only living descedent of Jesus Christ. It’s just one of those dirty facts of life. Sometimes you just have to walk away from the story for a while, come back, and then all of a sudden you have inspiration again. Sometimes you just keep writing until you break the block, then go back and edit.
I guess that’s really all I have to say about any of it. As I said it’s mostly stream of consciousness, so I hope this offered something.
