The Shroud Underground

tyrus568 · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:36 am Post subject:

Writer's block seems to be part of who I am. Razz

Eight hours a day of writing seems like the worst kind of masochism I could inflict on myself. The act is self-torture - just give me a gun and let me shoot myself, now. I find my writing to be like squeezing drops of sap from a tree branch onto the empty page... as viscous and slow as black pitch. I spend more sweat and tears over things I've never written, knowing they are lost and probably not worth writing anyway. Forever does the flagellation go on, the deceiver voice whispering it's not authentic.

But I write anyways. At this point all of the time I have spent thinking about writing is worth nothing so much as a single word on the page. Every chapter I write is a substantial boost to my non-prolific repertoire - so there is that.

It seems to be the hardest part, linking scenes together. Having a plot that goes somewhere rather than just eliciting feelings of melancholy or gloom, perhaps attempting to replicate a strange and wonderful dream and the feelings that went with it.

I tell myself that plots can be so self-evident with a good enough focal point. They can be so obvious. But all I see in myself are the shards and scattered remains of what could have been a horrifying adventure into the night. Shards that might be clumsily patched together, only to resemble something monstrous, something that is the antithesis to good writing: not to be scary. Cliche.

I don't write plotlines because I can't think of them. It's too logical. I have to freely associate... only when I can actually MAKE myself write.