A Sense of Doubt blog post #2004 - Does this happen to you and no such thing as writer's block?
I wrote this content that follows for my students in English 231 in summer of 2020at Lower Columbia College.
Following is more of the year series with the year 2004.
Toni Morrison writing:
SUBJECT: ENG231: The End of WEEK SIX - Does this happen to you? And such thing as writer’s block
Greetings writers,
This post is aptly titled.
I do not believe that writers’ block exists. Writer’s block is an excuse people who are not really committed to being writers use as an excuse to fancy themselves writers but to not do any writing. It’s like saying one has a “block” to working. Sure, one might have a medical condition, an injury, or some other very valid reason not work, but most of those people could write while recuperating.
Not everyone agrees with me.
Let me tell you a story, and you tell me if my story matches your experiences in any way.
Let me start my tale of struggle and barrier navigation by sharing that the story due for the workshop I am taking at Sackett Street is done and was delivered this, Saturday, morning.
It’s a good story, and I feel my revision came out well enough, but it was my fifth choice.
I signed up late for the workshop, and so I got stuck with the last two workshop slots: the first and the second week of the “class.” (It’s not really a class, though it has lessons and “class” meetings.) One kind person seeing my dilemma agreed to switch with me. My first story was due July 14
th, just one week after registering for the course. But with the switch, my second story was not due until August 12
th, and as others had done, I begged for a few more days, promising to deliver the night of the 14
th and managing delivery on the morning of the 15
th.
Finish writing a whole brand new story of no more than 6250 words (25 double spaced pages), no problem!
The first problem - work and life balance. Teaching just two classes does not seem like too much to do that I cannot find time to write, but somehow the progress on the new story was slow. The tale unfolded in fragments. I concurrently captured the fragments and made copious notes for world building. Just for perspective, my current world building file contains 22 single spaced pages and 6949 words with plans for a novella and about four short stories set fifty years in the future when the pandemic to end all pandemics sweeps the planet. It’s more of a dystopian world of perseverance than an apocalyptic world.
My novella is too long, so I was working on one of the stories featuring of family who have remained virus free while on a waiting list to enter the truly safe habitat maintained by the new world order (no more USA... I mentioned dystopia, right?). It was plugging along but really hung me up was the world building, much of which would be foundation for the story, unseen and not fully explained, but informing much of the detail.
After a couple of really good world building days that were short on fleshing out the story, as of Monday the 10
th I realized I would have to share an old story after a revision. I looked through my choices and picked my favorite candidate though after considering several others, I had back ups.
It would be simple enough. The story was 6900 words, so I needed to cut at least 1000 words because I also could see places that needed another scene or three. If I could cut more and if I kept the new stuff short, I should be close enough to 62-6300 words. But work and family stuff kept complicating my days. I compared to a brush fire the other day. I was thinking about the story and reading it in little stolen moments, breaks from the other things. But then Friday was getting later and later, and I had not started working on the story in earnest yet.
My wife was due to leave for most of the day, but with dinner, clean up, dog walking (Hi Camryn, who saw me walking in the Woodland cemetery), it was about 9 p.m. Friday night before I settled down to rewrite a 6900 word story and add some new scenes.
In the shower after the dog walk, I had convinced myself that this task would be easy enough to accomplish. I just had to hack the story down as much as I could, trimming at least 1000 words that after some reading I was sure I could do without, and then add a few scenes. But as I began to cut, I realized a few meant more like five or six scenes to write. And then there was research to do. One of the characters is a woman from Haiti whose family believes in the Vodou religion, another character id a PhD student in mathematics. And a few other things, like symbolic representations of earth (soil, dirt) and some elements of the 1990s as the story is set in 1991 or 1992.
When I first wrote the story in 1992-1993, I had really just made a framework for the story and had missed some obvious elements. My main character, the math whiz, might be unlikeable. I like him, but he does things in the story that some readers may find unlikeable, and so I wanted a scene to make him likeable. It had to be an organic scene, not one that seemed tacked on.
I came up with an idea for a scene with the main character (math whiz) and his soon to be wife’s family (from Haiti) in which he shares stories with math lessons that are fantastic and magical. Well, that sounds great doesn’t it? Showing characters be sweet with kids is always a winner, and this character does love kids so it’s not artificial. Okay, ever try searching Google for magical math stories? Yeah, there’s results, but it’s not an easy thing to sort all that, research the other items, write the new scenes, cut down the story. It was not an easy fix. The story needed too much work.
At about 10:30 at night, I abandoned my second choice (the pandemic story had been the first choice). I had already told my workshop pals that I would deliver Saturday morning.
I wen through three or four of the other choices. Either I saw the same problems with too much to do to much subtract and replace, or the story was just underwhelming and not my best work at the root, no amount of revision would change that.
Ultimately, I settled on my fifth choice, a story I wrote in 1993. But it was only 450 words. However, I had also written a sequel that was longer. All together I had about 3000 words, and after revisions, I would have about 3800 words, which was not as long as either my first or second plans but good enough.
I went to some lengths to add details from 1993 to give the story some of the detail that I did not have at the time as the Internet was not yet the robust entity it is today. Google and Wikipedia didn’t even exist yet, and one had to dial up to the Internet and either pay for the time or be lucky enough to have a university account that allowed free usage.
I am fairly happy with the results.
Why so many problems?
Margaret Atwood:
One problem was time. That’s a typical problem that all of us share. And it’s money because science has proven that time is money. They are the same thing. At least in our world.
Another problem is solitude. I can write with my wife in the house, but I wrote much better with her gone. I do not have an office door. And the house is not large. This space situation is one that is either to solve than the time is money problem.
I have a tendency to make jobs too complicated, especially writing jobs. I just got to the part in King’s
On Writing in which he explained that he has always been a putter inner and not a taker outer. And yet the best writing advice he ever received is that a second draft is a first draft minus at least ten percent. That’s counter-intuitive to someone who more naturally adds, puts more in, than subtracts, and takes text out.
Lastly, I have to admit that I was feeling a bit intimidated. The writers in this group are really good. They liked my first story well enough, but I was not convinced that my powers were as finely honed as theirs. One is writing prose as enthralling and mesmerizing as John Irving, one can get completely lost in his stories. Others are writing stories set in Hong Kong or Budapest, or in New York with quirky urban characters engaged in political activism. Trying to write for that audience, I was worried that my new story would not be well-crafted enough let alone older stories I was trying to remake and remodel (which is also the name of a song by Roxy Music).
When I failed to complete my first choice, and then I failed to complete my second, my confidence plummeted, and my feelings of intimidation grew. Others in the workshop talked of sitting down and writing their stories in one go. Not all of them, but some, and the stories were good. I have written all in one sitting before. I once felt like I had a story download itself into my head right before meeting friends for breakfast. I begged off extra post-breakfast activity to return home and start channeling. Literally, I felt like the story was a transmission from another universe, though not science fiction at all. It was my version of King’s “Stand By Me,” the pivotal adventure of a group of young boys. Thirty-six hours, after only taking time out for eating and sleeping, I had written a complete story of nearly 15,000 words (about sixty pages).
But that was not happening. I rarely have thirty-six hours to ignore work and other duties and just write. Also, the transmissions seem more broken and captured in spurts rather than a constant flow.
But it’s done. I finished the story. I submitted it. It’s not bad.
Arthur C. Clarke writing:
And yet, I still do not believe in writer’s block. My problem was not writer’s block. I have no problem writing given time, solitude, and proper research. And even solitude is something I can overcome. If I am really cooking, I do not need solitude at all. Harlan Ellison once proved the point that he could write anywhere by regularly writing in a store front on a busy street four hours one day each week. Come watch the famous writer write in public! It’s amazing! And Ellison is famous if you know science fiction.
The thing about barriers are analyzing and understanding them to be able to overcome them. Writer’s block sounds like a cop out to not define and understand one’s barriers.
Writers write. And then writers revise. It’s that simple. Some writers write every day. King shares about this regimen in his book. Other writers have echoed the same feelings.
As our good friend in our writer’s community wrote the other day, “writing is never finished, it’s just due.”
I can finish all those other stories and their revisions given time. I have found my confidence once again.
Does this kind of thing happen to you?
I am also posting this content to my blog.
Thanks for reading. I hope the content here makes you think, and you find some value in it.
In solidarity, safety, health, and wellness,
peace in our times,
-chris tower, LCC Lang&Lit faculty,
your friend in learning
#WritingIsRewriting
#LCCStrong #BlackLivesMatter #Don'tGiveUp
“Always look on the bright side”
https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/
Anne Sexton:
IDEAS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
~ Isaac Asimov from
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig pg. 125
"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
~ Albus Dumbledore
“If your world is night... shine your life like a light.”
~ The Indigo Girls
photos in this missive from
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2003 - Writers Writing
Stephen King:
THE YEAR IN NUMBER: 2004
https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/2004
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/2004.html
United States
- The Boston Red Sox win the World Series in baseball for the first time since 1918.
More Information for Boston Red Sox World Series.
The Boston Red Sox baseball team won their first World Series since 1918 in October of 2004, breaking an eighty-six year championship drought. The team had languished since 1918 with several near wins for the title only to come up short, maintaining the third longest World Series drought on record. Referred to as the “Curse of the Bambino,” some believed the drought was related to the Red Sox’s sale of legendary player Babe Ruth to their rival, the New York Yankees, in 1920.
U.S.
- Facebook is launched as a social networking site only open to students from Harvard in February by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It is expanded first to other colleges in the Boston area and other Ivy League Colleges
Haiti
- Hurricane Jeanne killed over 3,000, most in Haiti.
Popular Culture 2004
- Janet Jackson's breast is briefly exposed by Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl halftime show
- Ken Jennings wins over 2.5 million dollars on Jeopardy!
- The highly controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 film opens in US Movie Theaters
Popular Films
- Shrek 2
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Spider-Man 2
- The Incredibles
- The Passion of the Christ
- The Day After Tomorrow
- Meet the Fockers
- Troy
- Shark Tale
- Ocean's Twelve
- Million Dollar Baby
- Ray
- The Aviator
- Sideways
The Detroit Pistons beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA championship.
and me playing some Ultimate:
And I found myself involved in the last of the significant relationships of my life before I got married in 2009.
And I made these. A visual story in collage that a folded into a booklet (which is why some are upside down):
I met Margaret Atwood!!!
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| May 14th, 2004 |
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2008.13 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1868 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
