Techniques to get creatively unstuck when you know you want to write but are struggling with motivation and follow-through.
Category: writing process
I suck at plot. I suck at pacing. I have trouble knowing where things fit with each other, if I’m rushing or going too slow within different moments in a story. I’m not great at dialogue either. I’m probably good at half-baked ideas, strange characters, a sense of place, and mood. I’ve read quite a […]
Sometimes I feel like a plant, or maybe a vampire. I find myself feeding off the vital energy around me. I used to love writing in bars–so much gregarious energy unleashed. Last Thursday night, September 12, I watched/listened to the Philly Song Shuffle at XPN. There were 55 acts in attendance, and they each got […]
For kicks and giggles, I pulled together all my finished and unfinished (but promising) short stories into a manuscript back in 2011. (I included everything that wasn’t a fairy tale that I had written). I wanted to find out my total word count and whether I had enough for a book. This story collection currently […]
“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.” Hemingway in his Paris Review interview with George Plimpton. There […]
I started writing this post last week, and then abandoned it as my doubt made it too hard to move forward with such a smug tone. I’m back at it again today, pondering life, writing, and, most important, finding good writing habits that lead to being published. Last week’s beginning: I edited two stories today. […]
I haven’t written in months. My head is starting to feel like the cork in a champagne bottle. The pressure of unexpressed things is building steadily. First it manifests as a nagging need unmet–the perennial itch I can’t scratch, or at least won’t scratch yet. Then it becomes an annoying flood of ideas. Half-baked images, […]
It’s nearly time to write again. By Thursday this week, I will run out of my officially sanctioned excuse, “I don’t have time to write because I’m too busy with my grad coursework.” The big question is what happens when I get two months of free evenings. Whenever I stop writing for a period of […]
Now that I’m more diligent about sending pieces out, I’m getting volumes of rejections–several a week in fact. Most don’t say much, but a few say things like, “We enjoyed reading and discussing your work; in fact, it made it to the final tier of the editorial process. Although we are going to have to pass […]
After years of hemming and hawing, of feeling inadequate, ambivalent, worried, anxious and excited about the notion of being published, I finally this year, in my 40s, have gotten my act together enough to submit some of my long-lingering work for publication. Since the beginning of the year, I have submitted three stories, and I […]
One of my coworkers took a look at me today and was like “you’re losing weight.” I was like, “thanks for noticing.” In fact, I’m not losing weight, but I am losing width–the exercise is making a difference. Sporadic small bits of encouragement keep me motivated, and get me thinking, “Hey, if I actually put […]
here’s a quick list of my writing sins (likely incomplete): I say all cool things I think of twice, or more. My narrative pacing requires tuning–I either rush or linger too long My plots (do they exist?) I underwrite certain key points, or bury them I leave awkward phrasing lying around I like ideas and […]
My partner accuses me of only writing sad stories. Why does he think this? Because of my endings. I say nay, I write bittersweet stories. Life itself is a wonder of bitter-sweetness, what other endings could I write that would still feel true? This tendency of mine to err on the side of hopeful melancholy […]
After working for ten years on a piece that was almost, but never quite, satisfactorily finished–I decided, inspired by the Matisse show “Paires et Series” I saw in Paris, that if I couldn’t get my story to behave as I had written it originally, and rewritten it countless times, perhaps it was time for a […]
My lack of time generally, and my surging ambition specifically, make me feel like I’m in a kiln, being slowly baked by my desire for further publications. The terrible truth–now that I have an inkling that I might occasionally produce publishable work, is that I’m desperate to hit that quality level more consistently: I want […]
Sometimes I look in the mirror of craft and this is what I see: Too many notions, concepts and fancies oozing out of my brain and too few finished stories. There’s good reason that I started my writing career as a poet–I’m full of atmospheric images, but I’m not so good on the plot thing. […]
Categories
Rejection Calluses
I’ve gotten dozens of rejections from literary journals aver the last two months. Here’s what’s fun about wholesale volume ixnays having to do with my attempts at artistry: I’m getting more gleeful with each new “thank you, no.” Each rejection indicates at least one person tried to read my work. Each rejection is just another […]
Categories
The Fairy Tale Craze
Timing. It’s a killer. I wrote a novella-length feminist adaptation of Rapunzel in 2004. I’ve been trying to write complementary stories ever since. It’s been slow work, but now I’ve got close and far adaptations of Rapunzel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Red Riding Hood. And then I’ve got Stan, my devil story, which is […]
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Journeys
This weekend I went to a friend’s baby shower in NYC. As friends and parents dispensed advice on the parents to be, my favorite analogy was how traveling and parenting resemble each other: How you have to adventurous, brave and flexible and face sudden setbacks while you travel and after you procreate. (This is true […]
Categories
Dread
This is what I wrote 15 minutes ago: I need to add Guilt as one of my main tags. I’ve procrastinated my way through this evening, and now here I am, bloated with pent-up self loathing. Maybe that’s the new tag: secret self loathing. I do not do new year’s resolutions, and yet if I […]