Writing to get un-stuck.

A month ago, a writer friend issued a challenge to try and write something outside our comfort zone. She said, “If you usually write poetry, try to write fiction. If you usually write fiction, try to write memoir. Whatever your usual genre is, try and write something different.”

It seemed like a good way to get myself out of feeling pretty stuck in my writing, so I accepted her challenge.

I started with a couple of poems. They are actually pretty good, I think. But, who am I to know? I haven’t really written poetry since high school, unless you count song lyrics. And most of my song lyrics are about how to behave in school. But, I am going to submit them for consideration to the next issue of Bluff and Vine, because I am all in on this challenge.

I have never been a fiction writer. Even in school, fiction has not been my writing style and it’s typically not my first choice for reading material either. So, I decided that if I really wanted to go all in on stretching myself, then I should write a short story.

Yikes!

I started with a kernel of a story: something happened to someone. This something happened in the past, so I started researching the time period. Everything I thought about led to me having to learn more about something else and I realized a couple of things: first, this is pretty interesting, second, this is pretty fun, and third, this is ridiculously hard.

It’s hard and I don’t like that it’s hard. I want it to be easy. I want to sit down and write a short story or what could grow into a novel and have it look like a scene in a TV show or movie: just page after page of greatness printing out with little or no revision needed!

Okay, back to reality. And back to this challenge being hard.

I like to be good at things, but I also like for things to come easily. When I have to work really hard at something and I don’t know if I’m good at it, I am much more willing to give up. I recognize this in both of my kids as well. And in the kids I see at school.

Is there a point in working hard on something that we aren’t good at? If I am not really very good at writing fiction, shouldn’t I just give up? I don’t think so. I think there is a lot of value in working hard on things even when we aren’t good at it. I think that “stick-to-it-iveness” is something we have to teach ourselves by doing exactly that: working on hard things whether or not it makes us money or accolades or becomes a family heirloom.

So, I will keep working on my short story and maybe it will grow into something more. I am also working on a memoir written as a series of essays (I am a bit stuck with this one) and hopefully, a few people might read what I write and think it’s a little bit good.