Writing
I really, really want to write short stories. Really. But whenever I try to begin one, I can’t get past the first couple of lines. I’ve been wondering and worrying about this for a number of weeks, and have come to the conclusion that one reason I can’t create stories is that I don’t have the life experience to draw on in writing the sorts of stories I want to. I just haven’t lived enough - haven’t been to enough places, met enough people or had enough experiences beyond the familiar.
I’m sure I’m quite capable of writing **something** decent that is based on what I know of the human experience, but it would require writing a different sort of story - and, possibly because the subject matter lacks novelty, I’m sort of bored by the idea. Who really wants to write about their own experience when that experience contains none of the classic short story themes - no contending with great odds, no tragic romances or feats of daring?
I need your help. I’ve set myself a late-February’s resolution to write considerably more this year than I have before. Being who I am, I want to write well. And to write well, I need inspiration. Do you have any story ideas I could use? Concepts I could explore? Please, throw me a bone! I’ll do my best to carve it into something interesting.
Posted in News and such
February 27th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Maybe you could pretend trivial events are important, and use your imagination to skew events into importance?
February 27th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Thanks Nathan, I’m going to try to work on my observational skills.
February 27th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Probably kinda irrelevant to this specifically, but I found out why Roald Dahl’s adult short stories are so absorbingly good: he uses lots of very specific details. Maybe read some of his stuff to get an idea? Using detail well and researching stuff means you only have to have a basic idea and then build on it, so I guess you don’t need huge expansive story lines to begin with. Maybe try that?
Good luck with it all, anyway
I liked the 7/67 piece.
February 28th, 2006 at 12:08 am
In that essay, I was kind of trying to copy the style of one of my favourite writers, Gordon Atkinson of Real Live Preacher.
March 1st, 2006 at 11:16 am
Yeah, know the feeling. These days it seems like literally anything goes; you just have to have the audacity to assume that what you have to say is important, and present it with enough flair and imagination to make people listen. All the grand sweeping stuff of life has been done to death - there’s only the minutiae left, but one can certainly have some fun with those…