Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Despair and Creepiness

Writer's block is a terrible, terrible thing. It strikes in all different forms, affecting some things, or everything. It's a nasty, terrible beast, creeping up in the night and turning a giant, all-revealing mirror in front of us, showing up our weaknesses. There are many ways to defeat it, of course, all things I've tried and tried.

But, the bottom line is - tonight, I'm writing crap. It's garbage compared to my other stuff (and even in comparison to this blog), and I hate writing it. I'm sitting here, writing up a ghost story, and in my head it's brilliant. I can see the pictures, and I'm uncovering the plot nicely as I go along. I'm even googling some scary photos as I write, chalking up the atmosphere. I'm alone, of course, and I'm starting to freak myself out. The character in my story is sitting in a room not unlike mine, the weather outside eerily similar, and some of the noises around my house can almost be interpreted in the way my character is interpreting them.

To be honest, I'm actually dreading getting up from this chair, because I'm too scared. I've completely freaked myself out, and that's the aim of the story - except it's not working. Writer's block is taking the story in my head and mashing it up before it comes out, turning the words on the screen into useless bundles of nothingness, completely devoid of excitement, tension, terror or grammar. My story is a bumbling mess, and the only way it would scare anyone is if I were to show it to an editor.

However, at some point, the block will fall away and I'll continue to write normally again. I'll probably even look back at what I've written tonight and rewrite it, thankful that at least some ideas came from it all. The only thing we can do when we hit the block, is to write. And, that's what I'm doing.

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