You're busy. With work, family, friends, whatever else you find that pulls you away from actually being able to sit yourself down in front of the computer and just let your words flow like a river stream.
And when you finally get time, nothing happens. There is no stream flowing. You're brain is now experiencing a drought. The inside of your head looks like a dry, cracked, empty desert. No sign of fertile life. Nothing but tumbleweed and the whistling wind.
Sometimes, I fear that not being prolific, makes me less of a writer. That the fact my fingers don't float over the keyboard as my creativity pours out, means I don't have enough talent.
Motivation is the fuel that drives ambition. Fear leaves it empty.
And for years, that's what I've been running on. Blind, crippling fear. It doesn't get you very far. Basically, it only gives you enough power to coast.
Oscar Wilde said, ''To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all''
I'm afraid, until this point, I've been doing the latter. This is what I need to change.
I have so many ideas. So many it would blow your mind. But, getting them out, well, that's the hard part.
My thoughts run around like unruly children on a playground. Getting them all organized and in a straight line, is next to damn near impossible. Especially once you've lost all control.
And that is what I'm struggling with. I feel like the future, at least the one I want, is locked up tight and I have to somehow figure out how to pick the lock. Or find the key. Or the magic words.
I just want to feel capable and worthy.
I just want to believe in myself.
I have similar problems...I have so many ideas in my head for a comicbook or just for basic story telling that for some reason i can't translate onto paper. I thought about challenging myself to write a script this year and then do rough sketches on how it is suppose to look....but first I need to fight this block...
ReplyDeleteEvery creative person I know struggles with this. I think it was David Rackoff that said something like, as writers, it's like we work backwards. Everything you write starts out as complete shit and you have the job of refining it into something slightly less like shit. We just have to keep doing that until we turn it into something good.
ReplyDeleteI've also started just trying capture the ideas whenever they come. Those little morsels that you'll never remember once you finally get to the quiet space in which to bring them to fruition? I'll stop, anytime, anyplace, and scribble just enough to capture it on the back of a receipt crumpled in my purse, a napkin, gum wrapper? Why the hell not? Then I pull all those little scraps of thoughts out when I'm back in my studio and hopefully they take me back to that moment when the ideas were flowing. I saw David Sedaris do a reading recently and he seriously pulled a tiny notebook out of his pocket and wrote something down while he was reading...he never even slowed his pace! Later, someone asked him what he wrote and he said "oh, I forgot y'all can see me! I do that all the time or else I'll never think that thought again. If I don't catch it, it's gone forever."
Keep on keeping on.