Just some exasperations...

[Khiya]

I wrote this a while ago, just for fun.

*ahem*

I see mountains
Mighty oceans
I see sunsets
In my mind

I see battles
Gruesome clashing
I know heroes
In my mind

I see angels
Demon monster
I smell dragons
In my mind

I see epics
All unfolding
Magic writing
In my mind

Too bad for me
And just my luck
That's where they'll stay
I've got writer's block

[Jeff Gerke]

I know how you feel, khiya. But for me it's more like I can find a zillion things to do instead of writing. I'll have perfectly good time that ought to be used for writing my epic fantasy. Instead...I clip my toenails, change the catbox, launch a publishing company. You know, anything but write.

Jeff

[Christian Soldier]

Ditto!

[Khiya]

I love rainstorms...

In dark of night on stormy wind
The long-sought words come splashing down
Amid the raindrops plummeting
To crash against my windowsill.
See the flashing of the silver
Feel the precious words congeal
Hear the ringing in my mind as
Oh so many tales unfold.
Quick! To harness them in writing
Trap them in a net of wet ink.
Where's the pen? There, on the table
Scrabble for the waiting notebook
Catch the silver drops on paper
'Fore they trickle through my fingers
Lost forever in the bluster
Never to be found again.
Why must silver fall the clearest
Only when it can't be captured -
Snared around with pen and paper
Buckled in an inken harness - ?
Silver flowing through my grasping,
Free and shim'ring winds its tales
One day maybe I shall net it
But til then I'll wait and watch, sit and watch until that day.

[Jeff Gerke]

This is good stuff, khiya. I'll bet you could get that published in an e-zine if nowhere else.

You capture what a lot of writers feel.

Jeff

[dulci]

Khiya, looks to me like you're doing just fine in the WRITING about writer's block category!

I get nervous about not getting it down right, too. But then somewhere I realized that right or not, if I didn't get it down at all...well, I wouldn't get it down at all! Some days I must sit and force myself to write, and come away knowing I wrote something awful...but at least the story moved forward. But then there's the days when all that will pay off, the characters shove me aside and the vision will come out MORE perfectly than I could have imagined.

But I've found no other way to get to THOSE days then to write through my hard days. And I try to tell myself that the dishes, laundry and all those other usefully useful things can wait until I find out just what my MC will say to his wife and do to his commanders today....

I've also learned to think of writing as playing legos; that the possibilities are endless, the story can be as wild or sane as it comes out, and bricks can fly in every direction. Sometimes I build to kit - but most often I start out with my instructions in front of me, then get some wild impulse that no, the blaster guns shouldn't be there, but up HERE instead...and that crazy discovery seems to launch me past my resistance.

Go figure.

Then there's a quote I like to throw at myself whenever I'm almost blocked (not genuinely blocked, for that tends to mean that I'm trying to push the plot in the wrong direction):

"People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently."
--Anna Quindlen

And a handy site I found that happens to be dedicated to writer's block: www.sff.net/People/LisaRC/into2.htm

Hey, it's summer - how bout an un-block party? I love your poetry, Khiya!

[Jeff Gerke]

Dulci,

You have too many good ideas. It's hard to know where to start.

But if someone ever steals my toenail clippers I'll... I'll... Spend five hours researching the best kind and lowest price on new clippers. Then I'll spend three hours finding the perfect font for my story.

If only I could apply my genius to something useful, like taking over the world. Oh, or writing.

I think the Quindlen quote is dead-on, by the way. I think my novel's first 11,000 words (written this year, after a 4-year haitus) may actually be terrible, though they accomplish exactly what I set out to accomplish, which was a plan I thought would be cool, if written. So if the beginning is terrible how can I go forward? But the beginning is just what I wanted, so I should take my own advice and just have faith that it's not as terrible as I think it is.

Okay, there's my confession. Maybe I'm in the wrong thread!

Jeff

[Khiya]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. It's true the first time I sit down to write out the opening sequence of the great new idea I just had, I read over it and want to tear my hair out and cry because it's so lame. I get over it.

One thing I want to try is writing a sequence just for myself, so I put in all the excruciating details that would bore anyone else to death, but that make up the scene exactly how I imagine it. Then I re-write it for the readers with all the details in mind and with more drama and such. I think it would really help clarify what needs to be said, implied or ignored altogether.

I'm going to try that any day now. Seriously.


Oh yeah, while were on the topic of off-the-topic posts, what is karma anyway, and why's it so important?

And is that just a dumb, she-isn't-paying-any-attention question that screams "NEWBIE! NEWBIE"?

[Christian Soldier]

Hmm... my speech professor always recommended writing the beginning...last. Write out the middle of the story, whre everything happens, first. I haven't applied it to novels and stories, yet, but I migh try it on my next short story.

As for karma...if your referring to the little 1 under your post number, that's just...err...kudos. A method for others to anonymously praise something you said. Or, conversely, to punish you for something you said.

[Jeff Gerke]

And I thought I'd disabled Karma--and the related "exalt" and "smite"--when I set the preferences for the forums, but I guess it's active by default.

Jeff

[dulci]

The best price on clippers is the dollar store. Ebay's shipping costs are too high.

A little thing I've learned about beginnings...they will always, always change. I'm about 80K into my rough draft of the moment, and I know my beginning is awful. But, it launched me forward to where I am now, and I can't know how to really write the beginning well until I get to the end. So I leave it in its awful state, don't re-read it and torture myself or decide to rewrite it 10,000 times until I lose all enthusiasm for the story. I make notes in the margins as I go, and just simply write. I'm already seeing huge holes that I'll need to fix, but when I fix them on the second draft, at least I'll know where they're going!

Another thing that's helped me - I write entirely longhand on the first draft. Yah, I hear your screams of heresey...but really, it's worth a second look! For one, it forces me not to reread and correct everything I'm writing. And there's also something about looking at a blank page that's very different from a blinking cursor on a screen - something more forgiving. I know everyone says that computer writing is so much faster, but here's my theory: writing just a tad slower by hand (and in my experience, it is NOT that much slower) gives me time to write just a little bit better than the white-heat of computer writing. And without the blinking cursor egging me on, I have the liberty to sit and daydream, then write some more. Does wonders for writer's block!

Ok, off my soapbox!

Khiya, that sounds like a great idea to just write it out and not worry about what anyone else will think it sounds like. You can edit out all the junk later, beef it up, but it's a lot harder to edit in the original passion of writing it without boundaries. I'd much rather write a passionate piece than a perfect piece.

[J Jack]

Writer's block is something hat plagues us all, unless of course we complain about it. I cannot believe how odd it is that we talk about writing but rarely do it except in these forums. I'm grinning this whole time thinking about how easy it would be to open a word program and start typing those ideas but one more post, one more game, one more reason to not click that little icon my mouse is hovering over. Who knows, maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Maybe...I'll join Jeff in taking over the world.

And Dulci I share your passion for the pen and a blank page.

[Teskas]

This is belated, khiya, but I like your verses. Very apt! You should try to publish.

Teskas

[mongoose]

I can't say I've had trouble with writer's block, but I relate to Dulci's thing with re-writing the opening zillions of times. I ended up dropping my story for a while because I was so sick of the opening. When I finally picked it up again it was because I was teaching computer classes to a bunch of prison in-mates, which meant baby-sitting. I had nothing better to do. So I just put something down and went with it, and then I stalled. The action stalled. The character development stalled. It was the part of the story where the detective spends an hour inspecting the ground at the crime scene. Who wants to read about how he lays his flashlight so it shines at just such an angle on the print? *raises hand and waves it dramatically* Okay, alter-ego, but I think you're alone.

Anyway, I ultimatly skipped several days worth, and went on to the next action sequence. That helped me advance the story quite a bit, but it wasn't until just recently that I realized how I can cut the story way down. I'm keeping the opening, cause it's just hot! But then, in most stories, you focus on one event, and maybe a little build up to it; in the case of military people, one mission. So I can cut out quite a bit including an extra mission which did little but to establish who the character was, and why his superiors want to kill him. I could show that using dumb puppets, or something, though it is a cool scene.

Anyway, my point is that I had to just sit down and write the next thing, even if the transition is abrupt or sloppy, and whether or not I included a bunch of unneeded details. Later on, as y'all are saying, I can clean it up.