I enjoy making sentences and paragraphs. I think I am reasonably good at it (well better than most at work, who in some cases have difficulty spelling ‘reasonably’, or even spelling ‘the’)
At work it’s easy - I have got to convey this, this and this in a consice and easy to understand e-mail.
But at home, when I feel the creative juices flowing (I WANT to do something creative, NOW) nothing happens. I open up word, and stare at it. Then I close it and start pit threads about creative-blocks.
HUmph!
Now that I think about it - If I had had this desire to create while I was still at Uni I might have come away with a first (as my ‘natural’ skill would have allowed) instead of a basic pass (as my natural laziness and lacking motivation caused)
Mind you, If I did get a first. where would I be now? possibly in a job which pays a little bit more, but which requires me to work my ass off to meet deadlines, and to worry even when not at work.
As it is I am in a job in which I am well paid and in which I can sit back and relax. occasionally sorting out a computer’s tiff.
Lobsang, what are you trying to create? If we Dopers knew the genre/topic, we could donate sentences to you. Arrange then in a somewhat sensible order, hack out some connective tissue, and Bingo! near instant best seller.
For example, if you’re trying to write a hard-boiled thriller, I could give you:
Brittle blond hair teased higher than Marge Simpson’s, a tiger with crimson-stained claws tattooed on her hip bone, left bare by the shrink-wrapped low riders that barely surmounted her crotch – just one glance and I knew that Trixie’s purse always held a six-pack of Trojans and a jeweler’s loupe.
C’mon, tell us what you’re writing, and we’ll all chip in, won’t we, guys?
Lobsang, if you’re like me, just sitting down to the keyboard with no plans isn’t helpful, but you probably have all kinds of weird, wonderful thoughts while you’re not anywhere near your computer. These are what you need to catch, even if they don’t look like they’ve got a story in them–just anything that makes you go, “huh, that’s kind of cool.” (or odd, or interesting, or what have you.) Keep a notebook. Or a little tape recorder, or whatever. Then when you sit down, pick a cryptic note and see what you can do with it. It just gives you somewhere to start–once you have that, and once you start, then you can just keep going.
During the day, think about what you were writing the night before and play with it in your mind–then you’ll have something to work with when you sit down that night. I find that writing goes more easily when I do this, when I think about what I wrote the day before, or what I might write next week, or whatever, just keeping the thing in mind helps. When I spend my day thinking entirely about other things, it’s much harder to get on track.
There’s my advice, and it’s worth every penny you paid for it.
Whenever I’ve got writer’s block, that’s usually an automatic reaction from my body to either, A: change gears (if I’m in the middle of something), and start the next sentence or paragraph in a really interesting, whimsical way, or B: think of something weird (if I’m starting something new) to not only grab a reader’s attention right off the bat, but mine as well.
For example, if I were to write a thriller set in a modern-day city, I might begin by describing a horrible, tragic car accident that a main character happens to witness… and then I can use that as a segue towards the plot. It’s easier to direct the action of a story in a certain direction than to immediately get to the action right off the bat.
Write a variation on what you’re trying to WRITE SERIOUSLY, modifying it to make it an interesting MPSIMS (or GD etc) thread and post it here. Then go back and cannibalize your post and followups to use as fodder for the real thing.
