Prose Ennui

[KillerMuffin]

Does anyone else get this? Writing along in this fabulous story you can't believe you have the sheer genius of concocting, and then all of the sudden, you sit down at the puter, excited to have the opportunity to write on you glorious pulitzer prize winning material, and after you open up the file, you stare it. That's it. Too bored with the story to work up the energy to actually write on it.

I play with the punctuation and end up starting another story and coming back to it weeks, sometimes months, later. I really hate this. I want to finish some of these stories, but they don't interest me. I'd much rather pick at my toenails and sing along with M&M. Will the real slimjim please stand up.

*sigh*

 

[alexander tzara]

Yup. My last story took months to finish. It didn't actually take that long to write it but I kept stopping and starting. It's not so much that I got bored. It was more that I kept driving fast forward and then hitting these steep hills. My excitement about writing the story cooled off every time I thought about the hard work involved in actually finishing it.

With that story, each little surge of excitement, adrenaline and manic energy seemed to drain my battery pretty quickly. Kind of as if my Muse had just spent the night dancing insanely to thrash metal at a hot club and was now just sitting there on the window-sill yawning and rubbing her blistered feet - staring at me like she'd be quite prepared to tear out my throat if I asked her to give me a little slow romantic waltz by the fireplace.

"Please!"

"F*@k You! I'm away to stick my feet in a tub of hot water and play Donkey Kong on the Nintendo with a wee coctail. Do it yourself!"

There seems to be only two solutions. Either just leave the story a few days to build up that same enthusiasm you originally had or force yourself to keep writing - even if you know that what you're producing is the biggest pile of crap ever. Keep reminding yourself that it doesn't matter - this is only the skeleton of the story you're writing. You'll flesh it out properly once you finish it and start on the rewrite. Sometimes your Muse'll be so amused by your attempts to do a complicated pirouette that always somehow seems to end with you falling on your ass, that she'll say, "Oh f*@k it! You're hopeless. Let me show you how to do that properly."

Just getting to the end of a story can give you the impetus you need to really knock it into shape. With my last story I was stuck somewhere in the middle - so I eventually just left that part alone and wrote the end instead. It seemed to make a lot more sense then so it was easier to go back and colour in the bits I'd missed.

 

[Oedipus Rex]

Writer's block

If you spent less time at the BB and more actually writing it might help!

Just kidding!

 

[Alex De Kok]

Me too, Killermuffin!
My last tale, 'Karen', took two days to write and another couple to polish. Since then, zilch.
OK, I'm supposed to be studying, but I do like to put finger to keyboard once in a while. I haven't written anything for weeks now
I wouldn't care, but I have plans for Aunt Ellen...

 

[CreamyLady]

Oh, me too. I have about 20 stories in various stages of incompletion.

Instead, I'm really cleaning and finishing a great story I wrote (well, everyone who has read it thinks so), but it isn't for Literotica. It has nothing to do with sex, alas.

 

[Guru]

 

[Madame Pandora]

Funny you should mention...

KM,

I just got over what is probably the worst case of writer's block I've EVER had. I've had bouts with it before, but this lasted months and I couldn't write ANYTHING. Couldn't even START something new. Like you, all I could do was proofread.

The irony of it is the piece that I wrote to get motivated once more. It's about a fruustrated writer who gets control of his words once more by...ahem...taking out his angers upon his own muse ;-)

Should be ready for me to submit for posting in a week or so LOL. I doubt it will have much appeal to the average reader, but from a writer's perspective...I think it will provide a satisfied, cruel chuckle.

I'd like to kick the shit out of my lazy muse sometimes ;-)

MP