You know that thing you’ve been wanting to do for a while? That idea that’s been keeping you up at night? Remember that awesome story that you’ve always wanted to tell?
Why haven’t you started telling it yet?
Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “writing”
You know that thing you’ve been wanting to do for a while? That idea that’s been keeping you up at night? Remember that awesome story that you’ve always wanted to tell?
Why haven’t you started telling it yet?
I used to always say that I wasn’t a poet…
And I had good reason to say that because, well, I wasn’t.
I didn’t know how to write poetry…I didn’t even understand what poetry was!
But that never stopped me from trying to write them.
In the early days, I tried dozens of times to write a poem that I could be proud of. Love poems (of course), fun poems, meaningful poems, angry poems, sad poems, poems to show how frustrated I was at not being able to write poems… I made lots of attempts, but never produced anything I could consider a success.
I would get frustrated, because even after all of these attempts, I could never figure out what I was doing wrong or why my poems never turned out right.
As far as I knew I was going through all of the right motions: I was following the proper rhyme schemes, I had proper meter, I even had fancy sounding words thrown in there just to make the poem as pretty as possible. Yet, I still had a problem; because everything that I wrote, just, felt… off.
Well, as it turns out, there was a reason for that: I was focusing on all the wrong things. And, as with most brilliant breakthroughs of this nature, I finally discovered this completely by accident. All it took was a freak moment of extreme inspiration.
The muse is dead; and with her, your desire to write.
You no longer feel the urge to tell that story in your head. You no longer feel the need to get the words out. You have no interest in putting in the work required of a writer; because, well, the underlying motivation that inspired you to start writing in the first place, is gone.
This isn’t like writer’s block where you know exactly what you want to write, but don’t know how to go about doing it; although, it’s just as dangerous, and just as difficult to deal with. This is like a punch to the gut that knocks all of the creative energy out of you.
With writer’s block, you stare at a blank screen and a blinking cursor; but when the muse dies, you’re not even motivated enough to sit in the chair—and that’s not even the worst of it all. The worst part this is how sudden this can come on.
There is no warning, no indication that something might be wrong; you simply wake up one morning to discover that your inspiration, drive, excitement, and motivation to write are, just, gone.
What else could it be? Your muse is dead.
How cool would it be if, for one month, you sat down and wrote a completely original short story every single morning?
Can you imagine all of that material? That’s enough stories for you to publish your own short story collection!
It’s a nice dream isn’t it? But that’s probably all it will ever be: just a dream. And, as far as dreams go, this one seems pretty far fetched. The amount of new and creative ideas that you would have to come up with would be a bit overwhelming.
I have enough trouble coming up with ideas to write about on this blog, how could I ever come up with a completely original story every morning?
Well, do you want to know a secret? I can, and I do. Coming up with great story ideas is pretty simple, because I know how to make the muse work for me—not the other way around.
My purpose for the last four and a half months that I’ve been operating this website was to learn and to grow. In that time I’ve done more than expected of both. I’ve learned too many lessons—both small and large—to share in one post but…
We all know the iconic scene from the movie Gladiator: when Maximus (then known as The Spaniard) defeats six opponents single-handedly in just over one minute.
He had given the crowd the blood that they wanted, but as the dust settled after the one-sided battle, he wasn’t rewarded with the thundering applause he had come to expect—instead his actions were met with shocked silence. Frustrated at this lack of reaction, Maximus hurls his sword into the stands, spreads his arms wide, and asks the question that would be forever immortalized in the minds of 90’s babies around the world.
“Are you not entertained?”
Writing and stress don’t mix very well. Not for me, anyway. Sure, small amounts of stress (like having to meet a deadline or get a higher grade) can motivate you to produce—but if your stress gets out of control then it can be one of the most destructive things to the creative process. It infests my mind, entrenching itself in the background …
Life is crazy, and writing is hard: the mantra of a lazy writer—and still, sometimes, mine. I am lazy when it comes to my writing; not during the actual act of writing, but before I even sit down at my computer. They say that the first step to writing is showing up, and this just so happens to be the …
Whenever someone asks me what I write (and I get asked this quite often) I’m never sure how to respond. It’s only after a healthy period of awkward silence while I scour my brain for a good explanation of my writing that I come up with a brilliant answer like “I write fiction novels.” Phew! Crisis averted. It’s a good …