Greetings! I am haunted and in need of an exorcism?

[Holder of the Heel]

New here, Figure I'd introduce my character.

When I was a kid, I wrote and drew and typed and scribbled... Constantly.

It was all a constant stream of horrific humor poured from a derivative bottle of video games I liked at the time with a dash of people I knew in real life including myself. So yeah, dreadful, but it was at least something.

As I got older I did improve a bit, shifting to a style of incessant action instead, with characters instead based on our dungeons and dragons campaign (baby steps I suppose). But as I grew older and older and became more cerebral with regards to the idea of telling an interesting story, my gears grinded to a halt. I could no longer finish anything that I started, let alone getting past the opening. Do I lack a genuine imagination, am I simply "not cut out for it"?

Fast forward over a decade and I now have an incredible collection of journals and word documents and printed pages stapled together and notepads and... not a single line of a genuine start. Boy do I have ideas, but I've learned much to my misery that this is not the same as having a proper vision, and as I've spent all these years staring at a blank document, I've become afraid that whatever creativity I had has decayed, while the insatiable, necrotic spirit to create still lingers behind my shoulder, ever gnawing.

I don't know what I want or need in material terms, but I do know one thing: I need to get this dusty cobwebbed ghoul off me before rigor mortis starts to kick in--if it is not already too late. So I may be seen around here, maybe not. I guess we shall see!

 

[CupofJoe]

Hail and well-met Holder of the Heel
There is a chair with your name on it here... Somewhere...

 

[LCatala]

Hello and welcome.

 

[Maker of Things Not Kings]

Welcome to the Scribes site HotH!

As someone who once suffered the same fears about creativity, in many forms and mediums, let me be the first to try and dispel the myth: There is no missing out on creativity. It never disappears. And it will never leave you to rest. Not entirely at least.

Yes, we DO tend to overthink (everything) as we get older and we may be too self-critical of our own creations or fearful of what others may think if we were to share it, but the worst thing we can do is to allow those concerns, and our own inner critic, to keep us from putting those first words on the page.

If you are fortunate, those same concerns may become the force which drives you to keep going once started. Make them work for you, not against you.

No one puts beautiful words on the page in first drafts. Oh, there will be jewels hidden in among the rocky, spiny bits, to be sure. But no one weaves a mesmerizing story from start to finish in one go, or builds a world of wonder without all the same trial and error and the hair-pulling hours of uncertainty. No one gets to the finish line without leaving it all out there along the way.

But it all begins with those first, uncertain steps. The descent down page one, which can be more frightening than staring into any bottomless crevasse on any world you'll ever create.

So when you're ready, you'll write. A line, a paragraph, a page, a scene, a chapter. . .

This beginning will likely be seen by your inner critic as inadequate, because we ALL feel this way in the early stages. That's the entire point of first drafts and following our early, meandering ramblings. They are simply your starting point. Nothing at all rides upon those first words, first lines, first scenes being great. Not yet.

But they do make the entire thing, the shoulder-sitting beast who, in truth does wish for you to go on in spite of itself, more real.
.
Wherever your creativity takes you, I wish you the best with the beast!

 

[pmmg]

Well. I will say you have a good voice for writing. All of that struggle are just places along the journey. You’ll make it just dont stop.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Thank you for the support! I have given myself a goal of writing a measly 600 words as an opening to send into a convention starting next month in the hopes that it will be randomly selected to be read and given professional feedback. My hope is that with this small task and potential reward will help me deal with my paralysis.

 

[pmmg]

I think a good strategy is to commit to only writing one sentence a day. Thats easy enough.

if you post 600 words here, i am sure you can get feedback.

 

[Saigonnus]

Welcome to the scribes. I would offer this as advice: Don't worry about the opening of the story, you know, the whole pithy, humorous or relavant, eye-catching first line... it may not come. That doesn't mean the story that follows after will be bad.