Uninspired

I’m not a good fiction writer.

To be fully honest, I’m not the greatest writer to begin with, but I’m even worse at writing fiction. I’m not telling you this so you can tell me how good I am and stroke my ego. I’m saying it cause I know it to be true and I’m thinking that putting it down on paper might make me stop struggling with it so much.

I started writing fiction about two years ago. It was a whimsical decision, not based on any other event in my life at the time. I signed up to a fiction web page, and even from day one, I could tell didn’t have it in me. I loved the idea of having written but not writing itself. When I read over my stuff afterwards, it sucked so bad that I couldn’t even begin to fix it so I’d leave it as is. I forced half the people in my life to read it and I hid it from the other half.

Here we are over two years later, and in no better shape. I’m struggling through what appears to be tidbits of my second novel, when the first one is far from completed. Its pages are collecting dust in the back of one of my drawers, alongside the research I left undone for it. I wrote the outline for this novel, last fall. The characters are nagging me constantly, making me feel bad for not sitting at the keyboard and telling their story. But each time I sit to write it, words refuse to cooperate. Bleak and two-dimensional characters exchange unemotional words. My descriptions are the opposite of vivid. It becomes so unbearable that I need to stop.

Yet I can’t let it go. I can’t stop writing. Well, in reality, I can’t stop thinking of writing. I can’t let my story go, even if it’s a stupid one, it’s my story. I want to tell it. The characters want me to tell it. In the middle of one story, I start getting ideas for another novel. Yet when I want to write a short story, all the ideas have disappeared. It’s a lose-lose game.

When people tell me that my writing shows promise, I know they are being kind and not entirely truthful. When they criticize it, I feel this awful resentment and sadness in my gut. It’s like someone ripped my heart. Neither extreme is healthy for a writer-wannabe. And I know all this.

Yet I simply cannot let it go.

Previously? Ideal vs. Ought.