Writers Cramp

For writers, writing is a love/hate existence. We are creatively drawn to writing, but it can often be a painful experience... equivalent to giving artistic birth.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to get the writing creative juices flowing again. The goal I have set for myself is to write a blog entry daily for at least one year... 365 entries. This forces me to write and gets me back into the writing process.

I have a lot of script ideas that are flowing in my head. Most of my free time lately has been dedicated to finishing the conversion of my office into a home theater, but I'm getting a backlog of creative ideas that I need to get out, writings that are anxiously waiting to fill a blank page.

Yet, the process of writing is a very tough thing. Some days the juices are flowing and everything just pours onto the page. And then there are other days, where the blank page is equivalent to a two ton weight around my neck, holding me under the waters of indecision.

So, like most of the best things in life, writing comes with a price. Sometimes hefty, but, in the end, always rewarding.

There are three phrases that I keep in mind when writing:
1) Writers must love the process of writing - The love of writing must be stronger than the hate of the struggle it entails.
2) Writing is rewriting - get the first draft out anyway you can. The first draft is the hardest draft. If you accept that writing is rewriting, you'll know that you're going to have to rewrite it anyway. So purge the idea onto the page and worry about fixing it into your own personal masterpiece later.
3) Anything can happen - when writers block occurs, it always means that the writer has lost they story and no longer know where it is going. They don't know what happens next. And when faced with a creative moment where you feel like you've painted yourself into a plot corner, I always remember that anything can happen. And this frees me to come up with an imaginative plot twist that excises me from the painted corner and back into the story.

In the end, writers must write. They don't really have a choice. Like a creative crack addict, no matter what happens, the urge for our next hit eventually overwhelms us.