Image via Wikipedia I don't know what the hell is happening with me... I cannot write...It feels like, when you try to breath, and you don't have enough air to fill your lungs...it is like this for me, no air, no nothing. Just a big emptiness that makes me dizzy sometimes, and angry, most of the time. For me, writing is like a second nature. I become a professional journalist because I needed to write. After I came to Israel, I stopped writing. I tried to change my carrer, my priorities, but it didn't work. I had to "retrain" myself to write in English (my native language is Romanian) because I felt I would be heard better in English. It wasn't easy in the beginning, believe me, but I didn't have a choice, it was write or go crazy.I started this blog because I needed a place to cool down, with so many contradictory things going on in my life and I have to say I am glad I did, it helped my immensely with my English and also with my loneliness, as I made some awesome friends.
I then started to write, really and truly write. Fiction. So many ideas, so many feelings I had to put down on paper. I finished the first draft in a couple of months, writing in a frenzy, like I'd been channeling some superior inteligence telling me what to write. I moved on to editing, cutting and adding, and now I AM STUCK. Big time. It makes me sick just looking at the manuscript.
I cannot go near it. I dream of it at night. Sometimes I am afraid it will dissapear, or I will dissapear and nobody will get to know the story I wanted to tell. I make excuses, I make myself busy. I tell myself I am not feeling well, I am tired, or Maya is sick. Poor excuses, I know, but I don't have anything better to get me out of this mess.
Help?
5 comments:
Sometimes you have to decide to let the manuscript "sit" for a certain period of time. You do need a distance, and you do need it without guilt. After going back to it at the previously ste time, you will look at it with fresh eyes.
Just my 2 cents.
o baie fierbinte..un pahar de vin, sau poate cola :), iesit facut bagajele , zbor scurt pana in creta ( am vazut ca sunt ieftine biletele si o spun cu mana pe inima ca merita) o vacanta departe de scuze, motive, piedici. iti incarci bateriile ,mai primesti si cadou o butelie cu o maaare gura de oxigen si optimism si apoi totul capata alta dimensiune, lumina parca e mai roz cu stelute lucitoare si totul merge ca uns . e vizibil ca vreau in vacanta ?:)
Writer's block is frustrating and soul destroying, but every writer experiences it and sometimes it's better to just forget about trying to write than to sit at the computer in an inner rage getting more and more unhappy at yourself. I have experienced long bouts of writer's block but the inspiring muse eventually returns. The trick is to ride it out and make the decision to do nothing...you will solve the problem without noticing
Well, yesterdasy night I managed to write until Maya started coughing...
And a holiday...Who doesn't need one? But I am waiting patiently for next year, I want to travel to Romania, again...
It does sound familiar - and like the first person said, it does help to leave the story alone for a while... it might be a few weeks or even months, but when you read it again after that time, you will be amazed about what you wrote, and you will be able to edit it with fresh eyes!
Having said that... I so need to go back to editing at least two stories before I start the next one in November... sweet nanowrimo November is just two weeks away! :o)
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