Thursday, May 24, 2012

Short Story Month, Day 24. Follow through

So how's it going out there in story writing land? Is anyone actually writing stories because they've been following along? I'm not asking because you need to tell me. I'm asking because I'm hoping to prompt you out of the "dreaming about it" stage into some kind of activity.

When I first really started thinking about writing as an adult, as opposed to just doing it when I was a child, the sequence went something like this. "I want to be a writer, but I have no idea what to write." But my opinion about where the writing would come from shifted over time, and, if it hasn't become obvious by now, I really work under the assumption that we all have more prompts than we know what to do with. The world is rich in possibility once you look at it that way.

Where I tend to see things fall apart, at least for me, is not in inspiration, but in follow through. There are a lot of aspects to this, a lot of places where it breaks down--finishing something, revising it, submitting it. But what about just beginning it in the first place? What about taking a possibility from nothing to something? I find that my real regrets about writing have more to do with letting some opportunity slip away than with rejection slips.

Today's prompt:

Has something come to you in the last month that you thought you might be able to do? The haziest whisper of a notion? Make a start on it. A paragraph will do. 

Hell, a sentence will be fine.

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