Writer's Block: Round One

I’ve been in a bit of a stump since the last time I wrote something on this here blog of mine.

You guessed it; writer’s block.

Yes, that’s right. The creative juices have clotted. Yesterday showed a pitiful failed attempt at writing. Well, not writing but rather staring at the screen of my laptop inside a Barnes and Noble for two hours straight. To which I finally gave up.

Always easy to start a story.
Soooooooo hard to end it.

Right now I’m looking at 223 pages finished of my first short story collection, which I hope to podcast soon. But six stories remain unfinished. 3 are halfway there, 2 I haven’t even started and one is an adaptation of a previous screenplay I wrote as a teenager. All totaled, the collection holds 20 short stories. Originally it was going to have two additional stories, but I decided to pass those on to the second short story collection. Also, I don’t have the patience for those two stories right now. They piss me off.

I’ve been reading a lot, hoping that dipping into another author’s mind will wake something up in my own head. So far, nothing has really come of it. But here is one I highly recommend.

Talk about writer’s block. This book parodies that very concept. Eugene Pota, an established writer, now seventy, is trying to write his last great book. The only problem is . . . He has nothing to write about. The story is a unique experiment of what a writer goes through and the false starts he attempts. I originally had an idea similar to this, a book consisting of nothing but false starts, but looks like Joseph Heller beat me to the punch. Well played, good sir. I bow out of the project, respectively. It’s a quick read. About 233 pages. Already 100 pages into it. Pick it up, you just might like it.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

"If I'm trying to sleep, the ideas won't stop. If I'm trying to write, there appears a barren nothingness. " ~Carrie Latet