Fantasist's Scroll

Fun, Fiction and Strange Things from the Desk of the Fantasist.

3/6/2003

Excuses = Writer’s Block

Filed under: — Posted by the Fantasist during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

Why making excuses is easier than writing.

I had an idea for an opening to a story the other day, but I didn’t do anything with it. Why? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but they all boil down to fear induced writer’s block.
See, it’s like this… I have a series of ideas about stories set in a particular world. I can see whole, huge sections of the world all laid out for me in startling detail. But, I have no idea what anyone’s name is. Or, what their language is like. Now, I could just make it up as I went, but that feels wrong to me somehow. And, I’ve looked into creating a language, or several, from whole cloth. The only problem there is that I’m not a linguist, or even close enough to feel very comfortable creating the language. Still, I’m not quite willing to let someone else create that much of my world for me, either.
Quite a dilemma, no? No. Quite an excuse. I’ve been playing at language creation for literally years. By now, I could have several related languages and dialects, if I really wanted to have them. But, I’ve used that as an excuse to not write. Why? Because, I’m scared, that’s why. If I put work out there, people might not like it. And, it’s been more than ten years since I really wrote seriously. Damn, that was hard to admit. So, what to do…

Comments are welcome, folks.


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