Can I make a teeny-weeny confession here?
Okay.
Writing is exhausting.
I have a fiction piece to write that I’ve been whining about for the better part of a week. I’m probably making it a lot harder than it actually is. I mean, come on, all I’m doing is making stuff up, right?
HAHAHAHAHA.
Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
I’ve been writing creative non-fiction for so long that the idea of writing fiction, real, pure, unadulterated fiction is/was terrifying. Wait, you mean I actually have to come up with something completely original? Ah, crap.
I am, among other things, a professional staller. As such, I sat in my corner of the common room and sipped on my peppermint mocha. Checked Facebook. Checked Tumblr and Flickr for inspiration. Checked my email. Twice, on each account. Decided I was hungry. Got up and made dinner. Washed dishes. Came back, glared balefully at my computer. Flipped through old short stories I’d started and never finished. Resisted urge to bang head against wall repeatedly. Contemplated napping. Realized I was stalling. Also realized that I was scraping the bottom of a dry, dusty, empty barrel.
“HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” I wrote to a friend, desperation making its presence known in all caps and the excessive amount of “e’s”. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE ABOUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.”
(I get so whiny about writer’s block. I feel like it’s like that awkwardly over-opinionated relative that makes conversation just die. It’s this little voice in my head that says: “All you ever write about are the same things. Wow, you suck. You’re so unimaginative. Get some scope. What do you know about writing? You’re twenty years old. Hang on, you’re not actually even twenty years old. Stop lying to yourself. Wow, why haven’t you written more? This is due on Tuesday. You should be writing. What are you waiting for? Get your shit together.”)
“Write about me,” he joked. (I think he was joking.)
And our conversation evolved into this wonderful storytime and suddenly all these images just started flooding my mind. All the stories about growing up and childhood were somehow turning into a plotline, and I wasn’t moving fast enough to catch them and pin them down.
And now I’m halfway through my second vignette of this fiction piece and feeling slightly overwhelmed. There’s so much great material to work with. There’s so much I could do and so many places to go with it. There’s also this overarching, elusive sentiment that I want to capture, and I’m not sure how I’m going to do that actually. But I know it’s not going to be a good piece until I get that sentiment down on paper.
So first, I’m floundering in nothing and now I’m floundering in too much. (Although admittedly, I’d rather be floundering in the latter.) And instead of writing the fiction piece, I am of course, stalling. By blogging about writing the fiction piece.
Woe betide anyone who says writing is easy.
“Oh you’re just an English major.”
I will drop you where you stand without a shred of remorse. And then I will probably write about you in horrible, scathing, writerly terms, and have my vengeance.
So, anyways.
Back to this fiction piece.
The Wanderer 