Thursday, July 12, 2012

Writing Angst

Here I am doing it again: I am stressing about not easily being able to write fiction.

This is a joke as the very first thing I ever did was tell stories to myself at night.
It was because I had crushes on people I couldn’t have so I would create life and death settings where we were thrown together where I could say how I felt - mostly because they were dying.  I did died occasionally too, but mostly them because if I died it was most inconvenient to telling the story.

Let’s just say the Hunger Games strikes a chord.  I could have written it if doing so had even crossed my mind as something that would remotely appeal to anyone else.

I think I need to treat this like learning anything else.  Break it down into doable chunks, but it’s more a matter of figuring out the chunks.  I can come up with characters, but the overall story structure is something I am not practiced in.

But stressing about it is completely silly and just giving me a reason to beat myself up.  Stop worrying about it and just write stuff.  Bits and pieces is fine.


6 comments:

Jan Marie said...

I did the exact same thing as a child - the exact same stories. Perhaps different people, but the exact same stories. And I also find fiction incredibly difficult to write. Wonder why?

Elf said...

Here's my suggestion for today. Helped me. Sit down and write a story. 3 pages. That comes to some kind of an end. Don't rewrite, don't worry about exact phrasing. Just do it. It doesn't have to be an insightful ending or a twist ending or a clever ending or a clever ending. Just some kind of end.

Try it.

Elf said...

Did I actually say "or a clever ending" twice? Funny. Guess I'm not only seeing double but thinking double.

Ellen said...

Jan I think doing those stories may have given me an outlet, but I think I may have trained my brain to lean towards depression. I took meds for it for over 9 years. I am better now, but still have to be careful not to wallow which is another thing that can make writing fiction a challenge.

Elf said...

Ellen--the stories you told led you to depressive states--or vice versa?

Ellen said...

I think feeling the emotional impact of the stories I was creating in my head had a depressive effect.