Grind My Gears...

Okay, I know the title makes it seem like this will be a ranty post. "That really grinds my gears!" But it's more that I seem to have entered an idea wasteland so I will be writing daily trying to get things moving again.

Until I find the sweet lubricant of creativity (sounds super dirty that way) I will be grinding the sand out of my gears.

Grind my gears.

Forced march writing.

Doing the work.

Ugh.

It's such an odd thing. Writing. Especially fiction. I have been watching MasterClasses this year (as you know) and I've watched a few by authors I enjoy. All of them touch on their process. And all of their processes are different. And none of them can really explain HOW or WHERE the ideas come from. They just are. Because that's what happens. They just are.

Like yesterday's short story. I really needed to write SOMETHING and I really WANTED it to be fiction. But I had zero ideas or starts that were really grabbing me. I mean I have notes for stories I could have picked but I didn't want to waste those on a grinding exercise. The things I have notes on are for days I'm feeling it. I want those to be something special, not just something for the sake of being.

So anyway...

I sat down at the computer and thought...let's see who is in the bar today. My bar people rarely let me down. I opened my head up wide and let it flow out. The story was suddenly there. Though it twisted at the end (I even do it to myself) in such a way I had to go back and change a piece in the middle that didn't make sense anymore. Now was it a great story? No. Not at all. But it was a fine story. A good diversion. A thing. And most importantly a thing that showed I can still do it.

Which is the biggest challenge I think people who write face. We are always pretty sure that whatever this magical sauce is it will dry up and go away. And then we will be left with the yearning to write but no words to do so. No story to tell. No rants to rant about.

And fear dries up the creative juices.

And grinds your gears.

So I keep writing. Forced march writing. Waiting for those floods to come back. And you know they will. I hope they will. They always have before.

But until that happens you are stuck with blogs about nothing and stories about bar people.

Grinding those gears.

Sorry for the noise...