A middle-aged man's attempts to make his dream come true

This is about my attempts to break through writers' block, which I have been struggling with for the last twenty years or so. But I am not giving up. It has been my dream to earn a living from my pen since I was 13. The dream alters periodically - sometimes I want to write a novel, sometimes a stage play, a radio play, tv play, sitcom, etc. But always a fictional story.
When I was younger, I finished stuff all the time. I marvel now at how I did it. Whole, full-length plays I finished in months, sometimes weeks. It didn't matter what they were like - and some of them were dreadful.
People who don't write fiction might wonder why I bother. It's not as if there aren't great authors already, going all the way back to Homer. But I've had the urge to tell stories for as long as I can remember.
I don't know who you are. If you're just starting out, maybe you could learn from my mistakes, which have been considerable. If you're suffering from writers' block yourself, maybe you can take comfort from the fact that somebody is going through the same thing. And if you're a successful writer who's never suffered from writers' block, maybe you could have a good laugh at my expense.
Writing this makes me feel like Georges Simenon writing a novel in a glass cage, for passers-by to gaze at. But I'm hoping that, as I share my working notes, it will compel me to finish a project. And another, and another, until my work gets through.
Here goes...

Thursday 14 January 2010

Back in the saddle

I've started working on the play again. John Braine, in his book Writing A Novel, says that when you start writing, your heartache disappears ; and I can vouch for that. But this isn't writing, this is planning. This is the dangerous time for me, the time I could just say forget about it, roll the whole thing into a ball and throw it away. Luckily, I opened the notebook. I wrote one sentence, then another, ideas and lines of dialogue and questions and doubts and solutions coming to me with each word I wrote. At times like these, I tell myself : "Even one sentence can make a difference."I didn't write a great deal, but at least the project was going forward. And, as I worked, my heartache disappeared.
Whether I deserved to have my heartache to disappear is another matter...
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1 comment:

Me said...

Seriously!

Sometimes, I have no idea what the heck I'm going to write. I write a sentence and then another and then so on! Sometimes I write 10 pages, sometimes just a half.

At least, you started it and that's usually the hardest!

Well done!

18 January 2010 at 15:57

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