I have once again fallen into my usual creative trap: starting to write something basing on the thinnest slice of an idea, a single imagined picture as the inspiration.
Now I'm just sitting there, stumped, staring blankly at these short two pages that I've jotted down three days ago under the initial flow and tweaked a bit in the meantime. There is some introductory dialogue, some establishing of the characters, some painterly details. And then it just stops, right where it comes to actually moving the plot forward.
What do I do now? I don't know. I never know.
My mind is empty, devoid of any plan or sketch. What could this person do that would make sense? Where should they go now? What is their goal and obstacle? What kind of story do I even want to write? Every shred of advancement I come up with seems stupid and unnatural.
This weakness of mine manifests not only when starting a story — it's the main reason why I struggle to finish larger projects of any kind and end up writing short poems or isolated musical motifs. They aren't half bad, if you ask me, but… singulary. Disconnected. Stationary impressions floating in emptiness. And when I try making something the other way, top–down, I'm left with a stretched, dim sketch with no starting point. I seem to lack the persistence of (artistic) vision that would propel my creations past the stage of a single–cell organism. Is it the fear of uncontained potency that restrains my creative force? Am I so terrified of failure that I'd rather abandon a healthy sprout than risk it becoming something I wouldn't be proud of later on? Or is it the messed up attention span, the self–acquired mental deficiency of our time? All those reasons might apply.
I'll keep nudging that poor piece of text until it budges. I'm kinda sick of my current state of drifting through time on my two–page long disposable rafts. I need to craft a sail and an anchor. Somehow.
Hey ~bartender, can you mix me something heavy and slow? Guess I'm starting with the anchor.
This sounds very much like what happens when I try to write something, be it a book or a blog post. I've been trying to figure out how to lean into it, to write a bunch of vignettes and then hope I can string them together. I'm not sure what else to do.
Sounds like all you need to do is see disconnected, stationary impressions floating in emptiness as a good - if not desirable - thing, and you're all set! :-)
<raises glass>
Well, it's not that I dislike the pebbles that come out of my head or wish to abandon making them. Heck, I'll even shamelessly claim that some are seriously quite decent. It's rather a matter of my desire to develop myself in the type of expression that I find interesting as a reader, and the struggle of doing so. My rantness might have obfuscated this. I just want to write a passable short story, because I like short stories. And I'm less grumpy now, partly because I'm making some non–zero progress. :)
But what you are saying is no less true because of that — and I won't leave you hanging with that lone raised glass! To reasonable desires!