I have been known to do a little writing here and there, I mean other than blogging. I have written a stack about 1ft high of poetry. I have 3 unfinished novels, a couple screen plays started and a few short stories. So I am great at starting but suck at finishing it off. This is a problem that a lot of aspiring writers have. Why do we do this?
I don’t know about some of you but my creativity for fictional writing always came from pain. It was my way of dealing with the pain and escaping the real world for a while. I had these worlds in my head that I could go play in and write about.
For years I tried to get more and more done on a few projects while working full time and taking care of a family. I had almost no time to write and when I did have time I was worn out and just couldn’t put a coherent thought together if my life depended on it.
Back in October when my future wife told to me I could be a house a bitch I finally saw my opportunity to write. I spent countless hours sitting here staring at the screen. I would re-read stuff I had wrote years before and wondered how the hell that ever came from me.
It was damn frustrating but I kept plugging away. I would sit in an empty apartment with the kids at school and the future wife at work while listening to the music that I had always found inspired my best writing. It was the album Voodoo U from Lords Of Acid. I know. I can’t explain why but it would always do the trick.
After spending close to 3 months trying to write I turned to blogging. I started my own free blogger blog and at the same time had been accepted as a contributor the Rusty Lime. I had also been given a spot on a local news papers blog. I had found and outlet but the nature of the writing had changed. Instead of crating works of fiction I was providing commentary on the world around me. I was able to write again and I was writing some good stuff.
Then I had an epiphany. I realized the reason I could not write my beloved fiction because I was no longer trying to escape my life. I had found happiness. I have an incredible woman that loves me for some unknown reason and I have great kid in The Dude and a great stepdaughter in my little D.Q. I was broke but I was happy. I still am. It is this happiness that killed my fictional writing. I no longer had a need to run off into the worlds I had created in my head. I was happy in this world for the first time in my life. As time went on I started to writing more about movies as it is my passion and this site was born.
To write and write well one must find something that they can write with a passion. Writing for the sake of writing leads to bad writing. Writing from passion and pain creates some good, potentially great writing.
If you are stuck look at what your frame of mind was when you wrote your best stuff and work from there. You may surprise yourself.