Road Blocks

I’m not sure why writing is coming so hard right now, but it is.  I don’t know if it’s the thought of writing every day for the next year.  I sit down every day and hover the pen over the page, but nothing wants to come out. I don’t know where my story is going.  I don’t know what the characters are doing.  Normally that’s OK.  I don’t need to know where they’re going long-term.  But usually I know how they’re going to travel through the next few pages.  But not lately.  Lately I just sit and stare.

I don’t want to abandon the story.  That’s not it (for once), and it’s not that I don’t want to write.  It’s just become hard. I can’t explain it any more than that.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t really like to edit as a go along.  I just want to get the story out and then rework from there.  But I think it might be time to at least go back and do some constructive read-throughs.

I’ve started developing character relationships that I wasn’t expecting.  I like them, but now that I’m conscious of them, I feel like they’re trying to hard.  I feel like something that was good and natural is now cheesy and not fitting with the tone of the story.

Maybe I’m to the point where I need a general outline.  I never thought that would happen or that I would get to that point. But it think it might be here.  Maybe I just need to write down random thoughts.  Kind of like I am now.

Even as I write this I feel like I’m cheating, like I’m not really writing because I haven’t written anything for the story.  And I’m about halfway through my time.

That’s another thing.  Before, my thirty minutes flew by.  It was the fastest part of my day, even on the days that I struggled with the story.  Now I find myself wanting to reach out and check the timer on a regular basis.

I’ve thought about working on something else, but every time I do that I feel like I accomplish nothing.  Inevitably I never finish whatever short story I try to write while taking a break.  I always come to hate them and find them stupid, so I feel that it’s better to cut my losses than push forward and finish something that is mediocre.  Perhaps that’s just a cop-out.

I suppose I’ve spent enough time lamenting the life of a wannabe writer.  It’s time to actually write something.