February 18, 2020

I'm sharing it here because mentioning it in public means it's real and makes me a lot more likely to actually stick with writing it.

I haven't written any fiction in a looooooooong time and writing those few words and watching them appear on the screen was terrifying. 

Here's my opening sentence:

"Mark's headache was getting worse."

I don't even think I like it but it's what's there and it's better than nothing.

There's more, but not much, and I re-wrote the intro sentence seven or eight times because I wasn't sure if I wanted the main character's name to be Mark

even though I over-prepared for this exercise by putting together a persona for Mark, whose full name is Marshall "Mark" Campbell, that included his weight (240lbs) age (31) height (6'1) education (dropped out of high school) and some other details that are relevant to the story

and to be honest just the act of talking about a character I've created is making me second-guess all the details I made up about him.

(Creative writing make me squirrelly if I haven't done it in a while.)

I used to write stories a lot more often. I got into trouble for writing in class at school. I stayed up late writing very, very bad fanfiction when I was a teenager. I wrote and wrote and wrote for university because that's what you do when you're getting a degree in Rhetoric, Writing & Communications. 

And I was thinking about all the writing I used to do and all the writing I do now and I realized that the area I've been neglecting is the part that's the hardest:

creating stories out of nothing.

It's easy to write about my opinions or write about what I know or put together documentation or social media content. Psssssssh.

I can basically do that in my sleep at this point.

But creating interesting characters and a plot that keeps the reader entertained and dialogue that isn't horrible and ohgodohgodohgod all the other details and elements I know need to go into writing a decent short story?

It's intimidating. But yr girl needs to start somewhere.