Friday, November 03, 2006

Writer's Block

My high school writing teacher, Mr. Tell, was the perfect writing teacher. He was distinguished in every possible way. He had grey hair, and a well-manicured beard. He wore tweed! He probably smoked a pipe. In his class, I wrote the one short story that I'm really proud of (and for which I even won an award later in University).

And, Mr. Tell used to tell us, "Write what you know."

Smart man, that Mr. Tell. I sat down tonight to write about another alternate reality, and not knowing anywhere near as much about that life as I do about all the wonderfulness that is California, I suffered from total and complete writer's block. I guess that's the allure of science fiction - you can totally shoot from the hip and there's nothing against which to measure the accuracy, because you're writing about something that doesn't exist.

All that said, I'm going to give a little more thought to the topic I had in mind, but this might be my only entry for today. I'm going to dig up a creative writing workshoppy book to see if I can't unblock a little, because I really enjoyed writing yesterday's entry.

No comments: