The unwritten stories in my head – Guest Post by Paul Weimer
by Mhairi Simpson on March 2, 2012
I’ve been chatting to Paul on Twitter for a while now. On learning that he’s a, shall we say, unrealised writer, I invited him to post here about why he doesn’t write, as part of my ongoing fascination with the process by which people actually become writers. Thankfully he accepted. While I’m sure his story is by no means unique, he writes it brilliantly.
The unwritten stories in my head
I’ve been a reader of science fiction and fantasy for over thirty years now. I’ve been a player of roleplaying games for about twenty five years. The genres of fantasy and science fiction together make up the vast majority of my fiction reading, and certainly a majority of my reading in general. And I read voraciously. From Arthur C. Clarke to Roger Zelazny, from Karen Lord to Laura Anne Gilman. I cannot live without books.
It’s natural to expect that someone so steeped in genre to have dreams or at least musings of creating their own content, their own contribution to the literary universe. And oh, do I have ideas for characters, settings, plots. I get new ideas on a weekly, if not a daily basis. The flurry of ideas comes easily to me. A simple blog comment by Pyr editor Lou Anders today, as I write this entry, has given me yet another idea for the idea jar. And my jar is already stuffed.
And it’s not like I am afraid of writing in general. I write a steady stream of columns and reviews. As the Gamemaster of two play by email games, I do a fair bit of writing game turns. So every week, I do a fair bit of writing in those contexts.
Again, it’s not that I am uninterested in the craft of writing fiction. I listen to podcasts about writing. I read, clip and save plenty of blog articles about writing. I eat it all up, and think about how to apply what I learned. I’ve read a couple of books on writing, too. I try to pay attention to craft when I am reading books. I am not a critic but I try to look at books beyond a simple “liked it, don’t like it” and try to tease out the mechanics and skeleton of a story and characters and plot.
But the actual writing of straight up original fiction writing, however, almost never seems to happen. A few odd bits and pieces here and there get written. Little stuff like that. But the novels and novellas and short stories in my head remain firmly in my head.
And you, gentle reader, might wonder why? Why haven’t I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Why aren’t publishers and agents inundated with novels and stories? Why haven’t I even tried?
I could say, oh, I have the wrong software. Oh, I have no time. Oh, I have to think about the stories some more before I begin them. But all of that is bull. There is one simple reason why I haven’t.
Fear.
Fear is the mindkiller, or so Paul Atreides learned, in Dune.
But fear holds me back. Fear that yes, while all of these ideas are lovely, I don’t have the spark that it takes to be a published writer. Fear that the process of submitting stuff and trying to get an agent will break my heart and soul. Fear that, not being a business savvy person, that even if I write the Great American F/SF novel, I couldn’t get it published anyway. Even fear that I will be ostracized and hated for Racefail, or Genderfail, or what have you. Fear that the ideas themselves are worthless tripe.
Fear. Fear. Fear all the way down, like turtles.
I shouldn’t let fear rule me in this regard, but it is there nevertheless. Sitting on my chest, keeping the stories locked up in my head and never put into written words. Not even as something free. I don’t even get as far as opening up a document in most cases. I just write it off as a bad job and go play Civilization or watch something on Netflix. “I’ll do it later. Later, later would be good. I would have more time and be more ready to write this. I need to think about this some more.”
And the hell of it is, that fear is not strong enough to quench the flow of ideas, thoughts, and ponderings of those unwritten stories. They still come to the corners of my waking mind, getting themselves a cup of tea and social tea biscuits, arranging themselves, sitting in chairs, staring at me while waiting and wanting to be examined, run through, and developed. Brought to life.
Written.
And yet the fear is enough to keep me from actually writing them down, much less showing them to anyone. And so the stories in my head there remain, as yet unwritten. Worse, not even unwritten, not even started.
But as Mur Lafferty says, I should be writing. Really. But as yet I am not.
Not really a Prince of Amber, but rather an ex-pat New Yorker that has found himself living in Minnesota for the last 8 years, Paul Weimer has been reading SF and Fantasy for over 30 years and exploring the world of roleplaying games for over 25 years. Almost as long as he has been reading and watching movies, he has enjoyed telling people what he has thought of them. In addition to his reading and gaming interests, he can be found at his own blog, Blog Jvstin Style, the Functional Nerds, the SF Signal Community, Twitter, Livejournal and many other places on the Internet.
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Tagged as: fear of writing, I should be writing but I'm not, the ideas don't stop
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Paul, I understand that so deeply. Even though I write, half of my ideas remaining unfinished threads floating around on my hard drive, it doesn’t stop the fear to start. Sometimes it gets harder.
I’ve been wrestling with the question of ‘Can I actually DO this?” for over a decade. Some days I think I can, some days the pure effort to find words, make scenes, or even THINK about putting words on paper makes me want to dissolve into hysterics.
A part of me doesn’t want to do it if it doesn’t GO somewhere. I used to write fanfic, now I don’t even want to put all of that creativity to paper just so it can be left unpublished, viewed by a tiny audience, unsung.
So many days I want to quit. So many days I HATE that part of me that ever decided to try.
But I can’t quit. Because I’ve come too far. the world in my head is REAL. It’s beautiful, complex, and so exciting. I can’t stop until I finish. I can’t stop until the characters get their chance to speak. I can’t stop until I’ve tried to bring them to life.
I’m a slave to them really. Sometimes gloriously happy, sometimes bitterly crushed. but I think the one thing that keeps me coming back, is the fact that I’m not alone. Making other writer friends can help. Talking about your ideas with SOMEONE, anyone, who will say “What a brilliant idea! Go write it!” helps. I follow enough writers and struggling writers online that people have come to think I am one.
Amazingly, that illusion helps too.
And I’ll quote a line from Chris Wendig’s Blog, that has become my mantra, and my kick in the pants:
“I am the commander of these words.
I am the king of this place.
I am the God of this story.
I am a writer, and I will FINISH the shit I have started.
Amen.”
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Well said, Liz. It’s hard all the time. Sometimes I think starting is hardest. At other times I think continuing is.
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Wendig is inspirational, yeah.
Thank you for your input.
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Edit: *CHUCK Wendig. Sorry.
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Fear that yes, while all of these ideas are lovely, I don’t have the spark that it takes to be a published writer. Fear that the process of submitting stuff and trying to get an agent will break my heart and soul.
Paul, I would humbly point out that sitting down to write a story and submitting the completed story are two different things. You can write a story without ever submitting it. To what end, you might ask? Once you have it written, you may come to think of it as worth submitting after all. You really should try not to let fear of submission (and presumably, rejection) stop you from writing a story. Do it for yourself first, and worry about what to do with the story, if anything, later.
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Thank you, Jamie. A salient point.
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One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from Ernest Hemingway. “The first draft of anything is sh*t.” Whenever I feel like my writing is crappy, which I do often, I remember this quote. After all, I doubt Hemingway got to be Hemingway without writing some real stinkers first.
I think most writers feel like this at some point. I think the key to getting started is simply giving yourself permission to write something crappy. You can only improve the more you write. And I totally empathize with the fear. But from what I’ve read of your reviews and this article, you hardly lack for eloquence. I’d love to read a story you’ve written.
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Thanks, Cathy.
Now you know why you’ve only seen a little bit of flash from me but nothing else…
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Paul, Starting is tough, continuing is tough, ending is tough–I think the trick is to start each time and just write something. It’s like in the martial arts: some days the hardest part is just getting to the dojo door. But if you can make regular writing times and write 200 words, even if they’re complete rubbish, then your chances of getting to 1200 or 2000 words (each time), that aren’t complete rubbish, are considerably enhanced. “And so” to quote Babylon 5, “it begins.”
One more comment, which is that writing blog posts and reviews (essentially feature writing) is very very different from writing fiction, especially novel length fiction. As you know, I do both and find that it is best to set distinct times for each, because otherwise the novel writing would never happen. I feel that is because feature writing offers so much more up front — swift completion, swifter feedback, engagement with others. The novel has it’s satisfactions, too, but there’s a lot of ‘loneliness of the long distance writer’ upfront, which is why the quicker hit stuff has such a siren lure.
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Hi Helen.
Yeah, I’ve deduced that Nonfiction is definitely different than fiction. I find the latter a little easier because its a “duty” for me to get that review done for John, or get the Mind meld together…
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Paul, That story sounds *very* familiar.
I, too, spent 30 years reading lots and lots of books, most of them SF&F. I, too, had ideas tumbling through my head, only to dismiss them as not interesting enough to write down.
Then one day about a year ago I did sit down to open that document, telling myself that I didn’t have to show it to anyone if I didn’t want to. I ended up writing about 100,000 words of utter crap.
But it’s been fun, I’ve learned a lot in the process, and I’ve even written a few short stories that I felt good enough about to send them out to magazines. Without success so far, but you never know.
The fear hasn’t gone away. If anything, the rejections I’ve received for the stories I sent out have made it worse.
BUT: I’ve found out that writing down a story makes it come to life in a way that just playing around with it in my head never did. So, even if I never manage to get anything published, all that effort I put into my writing over the last year has been worth it.
So, the point of this long ramble–sitting down and trying may have its own rewards, even if you end up never showing your stories to anybody.
Thank you Paul for sharing this with us, and thank you Mhairi for coming up with the idea for this post!
Frances
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