Writing the natural way
December 4, 2024
Until the other day, one of the ginkgo trees in our back yard stubbornly held out against the onset of winter. The leaves stayed bright, keeping a trace of green while other trees faded to dull brown. Then, like a stripper at last call, everything came off in a hurry.
The life of an author can be like that. You might linger and struggle for a while over a story or a critical part of one. Your creativity flatlines, you don’t know where to go next, you wonder if you’ll ever finish the thing, and finally a solution comes along.
It’s rarely a “Eureka!” moment, though. I’ve never found inspiration in my sleep, like Keith Richards did for the riff in “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” What makes things worse is worrying about whether you have (gasp! shiver!) WRITER’S BLOCK. The fear becomes self-fulfilling and turns every sentence into a cosmic nightmare.
Garrison Keillor once said feeling blocked is a sign that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Anna Quindlen says it’s because people “despair of writing eloquently.” Whatever the cause, these brain freezes strike people in other professions too, maybe including yours. Right now, for example, the football pundits are working overtime trying to sort out what possessed the Ohio State coach in the Michigan game. (PS: Go Blue!)
For me, the cure is to put something down on the page, keep grinding away until I have a finished draft, and get an honest critique from a few other writers, even if it hurts. When all else fails, I put the project aside but do not stop writing; I work on other stuff instead. Like the leaves changing color and falling, inspiration comes in its own time.
I churned out a lot of the short stories on this page, which I hope you’ll read and enjoy, while taking a breather from my novel. If I’m lucky, and persistent, and patient, that book will be in print or close to it by the time the leaves fall again.
Originally published at http://daveswanauthor.wordpress.com on December 4, 2024.
