The Problem with Writing

It's really hard to write. I know. I've been trying to write for months. Weeks. Days. Hours. Until I finally thought, "screw this!" I actually need to write something. So here I am, trying to write something and what's horrible is that I can already feel myself running out of ideas as I type this. It's a terrible feeling, just waiting for your fingers to type, not knowing what to write exactly and never knowing when the ideas will run out and you will be left staring at a half empty page. I try to put off the inevitable. I fiddle with my spelling (something that takes a lot of fiddling with because I can't for the life of me, spell properly) I also check and recheck my grammar so many times that in the end (at the end?) I begin to doubt my own ability to express myself coherently.

I keep staring at what I've just written and think "what is this garbage?" "Ew, did I actually say that?" "That doesn't make sense, what was I thinking? This just in, I WASN'T"  Sigh. and so it goes. My two star signs according to Western and Sri Lankan astrology are Sagittarius and Cancer. Which I guess, technically makes me my own worst enemy. Why? Well, I'm told Sagittarians and Cancerians... and I got distracted by the eminent  return of Mr. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series and my desire to share the news I found on Buzzfeed on the wall of the Geek Club of Sri Lanka's Facebook page... So were was I, ah yes, I'm told Sagittarians and Cancerians don't really like each other apparently. I don't really know why that is, but apparently they don't.

And I'm waffling. This is why I'm having trouble writing these days. I wrote this post about my dad on Father's day, years ago and reposted it on Facebook recently. People tell me it's beautiful, and that it's amazingly well written and that it made them cry. My favourite comment was from a writer friend who called it powerful. She knows her thing. So I'm glad. I reckon I can actually make people feel something when they read my writing. and then I get the requests to write more.

And that just blows. It was hard enough to write one thing, but to CONTINUE writing is nothing short of torture. I feel like a liar and a fake. Sure I can produce a 'brilliant' piece of rhetoric from time to time. I do have my moments of genius. It's preserving those moments and building on them that's hard. Believe you me, writers bloc or is is block? is a very very real thing. Most times I just can't think of what to say really. Neil Gaiman says that if you want to be a writer, you need to keep on writing. But I'm one of those people who secretly wants everyone to like me and like what I do. Handling criticism, for me, has always been horrifically difficult. Sure, I'll grin and say "Go fuck yourself, if you don't like it", but I will remember for a long long time that you didn't. and that... bugs me.

I started writing a story recently. It's a madcap idea I found somewhere, and I've told many people about it, but it's going no where fast. I can't begin to figure out how to write it and what I have written is vaguely creepy and sounds like it's coming from a pedophile. And I don't know how to fix it. People are either quite incredulous when I tell them about my idea and say "but how will that work?" or "there's fantasy without MAGIC?" or they tell me, "make them meet in their dreams" "they should have a happy ending!".

That's just the thing, I have no frikking ending. It doesn't end. I don't see how it can end. Yay me! I'm about to become the author of literally the neverending story. Also, I hate that word, literally. I never know when to use it, the Oatmeal's comic helped some, but I feel 'literally' is the word version of the semi colon. I never know when to use it and I'm uncomfortable when I do. Because I'm convinced I'm using it wrong. I probably am.

The worst thing is that everyone wants to read it and I have squat. Less than squat actually. I have squa. Less than squat, squa... get it? I also keep thinking I should be funny or at least witty when I write. Sort of, anyway. It seems to be expected of me. I read somewhere that the ability to make people laugh is usually a sign intelligence and that someone who laughs at your jokes is more likely to like you and want to sleep with you. Well, I make people laugh quite often but my problem is that I'm never sure if they are laughing at me or laughing with me. I also don't think any of them want to sleep with me. Probably anyway.

So, what I've actually been trying to say all this time is that, writing is hard. It's very very hard. Just because I write once in a while, doesn't seem to mean I can do it all the time. Maybe I should start one of those 30 day blog challenges. Get into the habit of writing so to speak. But again, I don't know what to say. I also suck at endings. I can't write them. Every ending I write always sounds awkward to me. The happy ones, and they lived happily ever after rainbows and candy floss; the depressing ones, and they both died, messily, and in pain. The weird ones, prince charming found out that his princess was in fact lacking the pivotal 'ss' at the end of the word, still loved her/him and lived happily ever after. Nothing sounds right. So I'm stopping now. And it will be awkward and abrupt. That can't be helped.