A Writer's Notebook, One-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-And-Forty-Seven

The key issue for me right now in terms of my new flash fiction regiment, as I think I have talked about before, is in terms of having an idea for a new story each time I sit down to write one, though I don't know if that is really the issue or if it is more about having the confidence that the idea is present, because it really isn't very difficult to come up with an idea for a story.  Having an idea is probably the easiest part of writing anything, in truth.  I think the real issue is more just having the ability to trust that the idea is going to work. In writing poetry, I solved this by coming up with various tactics that let me turn the feeling of uncertainty into a poem, often by writing poems about how I am not certain what I want to write about or some other variation on that type of thing.  It is a bit naval-gazing to write poems about how I am having difficulty writing, I know, but the point of it is more about not allowing myself to be stuck than anything else.  I have been working to find similar approaches for fiction, but it isn't always as easy.  I don't think writing stories about not being able to write a story will work in the same way, but I have found that acknowledging that I am having difficulty with writing an idea within the story can open up possibilities.  I think it might be that the real key of it is in terms of the playful attitude that such an approach can cultivate.

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