Category: Okategoriserade

Procrastinate 

I’m sitting at a cafe reading one of my stories when a fly landed beside me. There was nothing particularly special about this fly, maybe it was a bit more colourful than I was used to, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It acted like a typical fly, cleaning itself with its front legs rigorously while staring at the window trying to figure out why it can’t fly through it. It must have found a solution, or maybe it got inpatient because it dashed right into the window and landed back on the table again, next to my computer. 

It started cleaning itself again, the wings this time. It doesn’t look unclean and I wonder if he really needs to groom itself all the time or if it is just an instinct whenever it is idle. Why do they clean themselves with their feet, it’s the dirtiest part of their body, surely? But then again, I don’t know anything about flies. It made another dash at the window, unsuccessfully and landed this time on my shoulder. It started cleaning itself again, furiously.

I did not swat the fly. Instead I let it be as I walked out from the cafe and waited until it realised it was free and I wondered if I should go back to reading again.

Talk to me on Twitter if you want – most of my short, brain-stormy, ideas happen over there.

by Stamphers

Violent Housework

There’s one quote that always comes to mind after a long writing session . Granted, I don’t often remember it word for word but I get the meaning:

“Never Empty the Well of Your Writing. I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.” – Ernest Hemingway

I’ve emptied this well a couple of times, and the feeling is awful. You are in the middle of a sentence and then suddenly nothing good comes out. It’s like the tap has dried and no matter how hard you try, you can’t coax your brain to continue. The feeling of frustration is unlike any other and you just want to scream – unfortunately I can’t because I don’t wanna bother my neighbours.

Sometimes this feeling is paralyzing, but most of the time, I actually end up being very productive in other things when I botch a writing session like that. The dishes gets done, I clean the house and do other chores, although, I need to be careful because I do it very violently.

by Stamphers

Don’t assume that things will work out as you write your script. Plot demands serious thought and you will just end up wasting time if you skip it.

For me, it boils down to having to learn early in the writing process what works and what’s not and not jump at every idea you have, especially if you have a lot of them, which I have all the time… Endlessly…

Basically; don’t start on something when you got nothing.

 

by Stamphers

The Destroyers

“You can destroy our society, kill a great many of us, even most of us. But when most of us are gone,and only a few are alive, we will rise, because humanity never gives up. Survival is in our blood; desire is our moto. There will be no hiding once we rise and take revenge on those that destroyed us.”

by Stamphers

It shouldn’t be this frustrating

I while back, I promised myself to never work on a short story for more than a month and now I’ve broken this promise and I feel awful. Why did it take longer than the other times? I don’t know, but I feel that I need to figure this out. Writing a story shouldn’t be this hard and I refuse to accept that the story itself was flawed from the beginning. Everything can be made into a story, it’s just the author that messes up along the way. All I have to do is swallow my pride and do it over again… Right?

The way I figure out something is wrong is when I’m about to reach the ending of the tale and I start to struggle. Something doesn’t make sense and thing don’t wrap up as neatly as they should and I don’t know why. I can imagine part of the problem is that I rely heavily on intuition, that one decision leads to another and will eventually guide me towards the true ending.

Which leads me to believe it’s not the ending that’s the problem, but the beginning. If the ending sucks it is the beginning that is flawed. Makes sense, if the foundation is flimsy the entire building will be flimsy. The question is, can I identify what makes the foundation flimsy before I reach the ending? So that I don’t have to deal with the frustration and rewrites? I don’t know, I honestly don’t. At least I have located the problem, hopefully…

by Stamphers