Looking for the way home

[little_rose]

Hey, good luck eryn. You seem thoughtful and articulate, not to mention determined! Maybe it's a stage of development or something that you're going through--longterm writer's block!?
Either way, i look forward to reading whatever you write

xx

[her_Joe]

Eryn, there's a sort of -- ahem -- constipation that is induced by life demands. In my case I was a manager over some four dozen folk. The need to keep it all organized, businesslike, and sounding professional made it so that it was extremely difficult to let that part of me go that I needed to be able to release to be healthy. And creative.

I developed my own form of freelance. Then I found out that other writers had used it too, Sylvia Plath being one and Hemingway being another. But none of that means it works for you or anyone else. But you have to try everything, I understand.

I got up way before I needed to. 3 AM in fact. and I wrote until the rest of the house had to get up. (changed of course depending on age of kids, etc.)

What did I write? I began each morning with one "honest" thought (Hemingway) and wrote spontaneously, without editing (even for spelling) as fast as my fingers could move -- from those pages, when I would read them over on a weekend (usually), I would find 2 or sometimes 10 worth doing something with. Those went into a separate file, and the rest got deleted.

Eventually, from all of this semi-conscious meandering and babbling, the germ of an idea for a story would form, or for a group of poems, something. And then I could use those pages I had saved to begin something "real."

It was a hard way to accomplish what once had been so easy for me, but it kept me "alive" and a few of the things I did in that period even turned out good.

I hope you have similar luck.

hJ