Sunday, August 24, 2008

1

The first step in confronting a lack of desire to write is to start writing something. This is to get the creative juices flowing, and more importantly, to make it so that NOT writing requires some sort of exertion, rather than the other way around. If you are as lazy and difficult to motivate as me, this is an important thing.

I often have ideas for novels that I would like to write. I plot them out in my head, create a concept and a main character, maybe start thinking of a setting.. and then that little spark of creative passion for the idea snuffs out, and I'm left with a "that would have been neat." I have a lot of those, self-contained pieces of my imagination, strung together by a common thread of neglect. I wanted to write "failure", but that implies I tried in the first place.
In reality, I never started, because starting would leave me open to failure. The best way to be a fabulous writer with unlimited potential is to never write anything at all; your fabulous ideas and masterful prose remains safely in your head, where you can coo about how epoch-shaking and magnificent it is.

Another problem I have is that the act of writing something that takes more than one sitting is such an unfathomable level of commitment to me that just thinking about it is incredibly daunting. I am not the best at patience.
This has been a conflict within me for a long, long time. Ever since I was little, I wanted to write a novel. The urge to express myself artistically is very strong- I want to learn to play the guitar, I want to write a novel, I want to sing, I want learn to dance- but all of those aspirations are crushed by the simple fact that I lack the drive, and the patience, to learn how to do any of them.
That, ultimately, is the biggest reason I don't write novels. I don't know how. An awareness of the craft, what should be in them, how things should go- none of these are any help for the actual act of creation, they are only guideposts for those who have started to move. I never leave the gate.

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