Writing in the Library
I spent some time writing tonight and got pretty much nowhere at all. I had all my supplies: computer in case I wanted to type, notebook and pen in case I wanted to write, ice tea in case I was thirsty, Clyde on my feet in case I was lonely...and nothing.
All of the sudden the entire thing seemed completely overwhelming and impossible. Who am I to think I could even begin to do this? Do you know how much goes into a book from start to finish and how completely unprepared I am?
I stared at my paper and felt the terrifying void of zero. inspiration. Whenever this happens, I usually start writing random words and thoughts down (even if it's just "I don't know what to write. Write, write, write. Nope, nothing to write.") in the hopes that something will lead me down an interesting path, but everywhere I went tonight I just came up against a brick wall that said "HALEY. YOU'RE STUPID."
So after some written rambling focused on how much I don't know ("What kind of writer am I?" "What kind of characters do I want to write about?" "What makes a story someone would want to read?" "AHHHHH."), I had worked myself into a pretty good panic. In a last ditch effort, I grabbed one of my writing books off the shelf. I was looking for a writing prompt or idea, but instead I read this:
"You started learning to write -- at the latest -- as soon as you were born. You learned within hours to recognize an 'audience,' and within a few days that expressing yourself would elicit a response [...] Within a year you had begun to understand the structure of sentences and to learn rules of immense subtlety and complexity, so that for no precisely understood reason you would always say 'little red wagon' rather than 'red little wagon.' [...] By the time you started school you had (mostly thanks to television) watched more drama than the nobility of the Renaissance, and you understood a great deal about how a character is developed, how a joke is structured, how a narrative expectation is met, how dramatic exposition, recognition, and reversal are achieved [...] You are, in fact, a literary sophisticate. You have every right to write."
I kinda wanted to cry. I took my pen and underlined that last sentence. "You have every right to write."
She goes on to talk about the "unnecessary panic" people feel sometimes when they try to write, just like others feel when faced with public speaking. I don't know why I picked up this book or why I happened to flip to that section, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. I still wasn't able to write much - I did squeeze out a page or two off of a prompt in the next chapter, but I can try again tomorrow.
All of the sudden the entire thing seemed completely overwhelming and impossible. Who am I to think I could even begin to do this? Do you know how much goes into a book from start to finish and how completely unprepared I am?
I stared at my paper and felt the terrifying void of zero. inspiration. Whenever this happens, I usually start writing random words and thoughts down (even if it's just "I don't know what to write. Write, write, write. Nope, nothing to write.") in the hopes that something will lead me down an interesting path, but everywhere I went tonight I just came up against a brick wall that said "HALEY. YOU'RE STUPID."
So after some written rambling focused on how much I don't know ("What kind of writer am I?" "What kind of characters do I want to write about?" "What makes a story someone would want to read?" "AHHHHH."), I had worked myself into a pretty good panic. In a last ditch effort, I grabbed one of my writing books off the shelf. I was looking for a writing prompt or idea, but instead I read this:
"You started learning to write -- at the latest -- as soon as you were born. You learned within hours to recognize an 'audience,' and within a few days that expressing yourself would elicit a response [...] Within a year you had begun to understand the structure of sentences and to learn rules of immense subtlety and complexity, so that for no precisely understood reason you would always say 'little red wagon' rather than 'red little wagon.' [...] By the time you started school you had (mostly thanks to television) watched more drama than the nobility of the Renaissance, and you understood a great deal about how a character is developed, how a joke is structured, how a narrative expectation is met, how dramatic exposition, recognition, and reversal are achieved [...] You are, in fact, a literary sophisticate. You have every right to write."
(Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, by Janet Burroway)
I kinda wanted to cry. I took my pen and underlined that last sentence. "You have every right to write."
She goes on to talk about the "unnecessary panic" people feel sometimes when they try to write, just like others feel when faced with public speaking. I don't know why I picked up this book or why I happened to flip to that section, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. I still wasn't able to write much - I did squeeze out a page or two off of a prompt in the next chapter, but I can try again tomorrow.