I don’t know why I’m stuck, just that I am. I can be a prolific writer, at times. Yet again and again I keep coming back to this starting place, of trying to write a paranormal adventure which has never been written to break the mind of the reader. In my mind it seems so simple, yet I’m stuck as stuck can be.
I know part of it is the entirely valid fear that no one will ever read it, so much of what I write no one ever reads. Much of what I write is a manic exercise in trying to quiet my thoughts. So to work away at a masterpiece, what if no one ever reads it? What if I break no minds at all, hmmm?
Of course it is possible with the work I think no one reads there are lurkers out there who do read and give no feedback, just as I do with others work. That gives me no satisfaction. It does give a slight motivation to try and write it. I see it trying to write itself out there, the story wants to be written, it laughs at me.
Maybe only an author can understand, a story is like a parasite or disease, unrelenting and never letting go until it is told. Wretched thing birthed out of trauma and the things I saw. I really did want to be a writer from the start, but there was no place for a writer of that age, I’m only coming now to the age I have enough stories to tell. Now telling the stories, that’s the real trick.
Yet, if nothing comes of any of my attempts, I must tell stories. I feel it in my bones and my heart. That is the call for people like me who are too used up to dig ditches. How to get unstuck, that is what I must learn.
1 comment
I’m not a writer but I am/was a painter so I know that burning desire to share a creative vision, along with all the negatives of sharing. It’s a tremendous strength and vulnerability at the same time, for reasons you said. And the result of these opposing forces can be paralysis.
Something that helps budge me is looking at history and seeing all the great creative people who lived & died in obscurity or outright failure only to become immortal legends because of their work later. In painting there’s Van Gogh, in poetry Emily Dickinson, in music Mozart (who had success but ultimately died a pauper), and the list goes on all the way back to ancient times.
One thing that all these people had in common is that they believed in their own work enough to keep cranking it out, even if nobody bought a single work like Van Gogh or Dickinson. I suppose the high or escape they got from working was their only reward.
What ruins me in that regard is my frustration at being pointless. What good is another painting in the world even if it’s a masterpiece? Don’t we have enough crowding museums, living room walls, dumpsters? Sometimes I get so nihilistic that I feel like Van Gogh was insignificant. The human race will eventually die out, the planet dry up, and what was it all for?
A psychologist might say that such nihilism is just an excuse and the real paralysis is caused by lack of confidence, and maybe that’s true. If I could be rich & famous, however fleeting, that alone would motivate me. So I guess the real show stopper is thinking I’m not good enough and just spinning my wheels, otherwise what’s to stop me (or you) from getting a cheap website and uploading stuff?