Poetatwork - Poet At Work

“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try accepting yourself and see what happens.”

— Louise Hay

I just wrote 8 pages when I haven't written in months and was beginning to think I'd never be able to again. Idk what it is, but I am sharing and manifesting this energy for every writer who sees this. May you write 8 quality pages effortlessly and find joy writing once more

the classic trope of "what if you went to a town and it was weird" never fails

Mr Gaiman, I wonder if you can help me. I have so many story ideas but any time I try to work on one I get nowhere and immediately hit a wall. Do you have any idea what I could be doing wrong?

Perhaps you are expecting it to be easy. Walls are there to be climbed or knocked down or gone around. You don't have to stop just because it gets hard or you get stuck or you don't know what happens next. If you get stuck, figure out how to get unstuck. If it's not working, do what you have to do to get it working.

Take the story idea. Write down what you know about it. Write down the characters you know going into it. And then think about where your story starts (which is often not the place that the overall story begins) and whose eyes we are seeing it through and where and how you want to begin.

If you hit a wall, go forward, don't stop. Skip to the next scene where you know what happens. Write a bad version of a scene you can fix later. Do what needs doing to keep moving.

Did you ever have a great idea for a Story, but knew that it was far beyond your skill level? What did you do?

That was how I felt about The Graveyard Book. So I wrote and wrote, determined that one day I would be a good enough writer to write that book. And nineteen years later I started it, and twenty one years later I finished it.

“Understanding your past and embarking on a new future can be a bittersweet process. Shining a light on what happened to you and how it affected your choices can stir up sadness about what you’ve lost or never had. That’s the way light is. It shines on everything, not just the things we want to see. When you decide to uncover the truth about yourself and your family relationships, you may be surprised by what’s revealed, especially when you see how these patterns have been passed down through the generations. Sometimes you may wonder whether all this knowledge is for the best. It may even seem as though it would be better not to know.”

—

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson

“Be patient when things are not going right. Accept that what is yours will come to you in the right way at just the right moment.”

— Unknown