A writer can have all of the creativity in the world, and still have difficult writing sometimes. This is a situation that I am all too familiar with. I can have the story playing out in my head but having trouble expressing it in writing. The two biggest obstacle blocks are those of procrastination and perfectionism.
My procrastination can come in many forms. The chief among these is my hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. My thoughts are often racing too fast to isolate a single train of thought. As a result, there are times when it is extremely difficult to concentrate. Rapid thoughts can also give me a surplus of restless energy. My mind and body demand to be doing something at all times. At other times, I am very lethargic, which makes my thoughts very confused and scrambled. Trying to balance between these two extremes can itself take away from my writing time. Secondly, my personal health can sometimes take priority over my writing. I have been encouraged to ” take care of myself” above all else. This idea often leads me to telling myself that I don’t “feel” like writing, as well as to episodes of depression. During these episodes, I can find it hard to even get out of bed. On the other hand, my physical weaknesses often drive toward absolute excellence.
While the pursuit of excellence is not necessarily a bad thing, I can often take it too far. I completely forget about the process of “Free Writing”. Free writing is the act of simply writing down all of my creative thoughts as they come. I can refuse to put words down on paper until they “sound just right”. In this way, I can build a mental dam. The words and/or image crowd against each other, figuratively screaming for attention. However, when I try to give them that attention, I get stuck with finding the perfect words and the whole mess starts over again. Just to be clear, I need to find a way to break this cycle. Hopefully, the creative writing course can help me with that, but more on that later. God bless all of my readers.