Soul Strut

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<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>Those are good thoughts, thanks to both of you. The hardest thing for me for fiction is getting started -- not just staring at that empty page, but also conceiving at least a solid chunk of the story arc in advance AND generating enough momentum that the writing starts flowing naturally. Once I get over those hurdles, the process becomes a lot more free-flowing and enjoyable for me. </blockquote> Yo - that's the same problem with non-fiction too. Anything that depends on a narrative structure can hang up a writer who likes to write in linear fashion (such as myself). The problem, as you note, is simply getting started and sometimes, it's best to abandon the idea that you have some killer opening already set up and simply get down a placeholder and try to get to the body of the work rather than hanging up forever on the opener. </blockquote> Very true. The problem I run into with fiction is that I often sit down to write w/o a story in mind. It's more like -- I've finally got some time I can set aside, I feel compelled to try my hand at this shit, so let me sit down and see where this goes. And for me that approach too often results in material that's thinly veiled autobiography -- me taking one of my true-to-life "greatest hit" stories and embellishing. But if I wait to write every time until I have a complete story bouncing around in my head, I'd only be sitting down to write once or twice a year... so maybe I need to play around with storyboarding or some other narrative-building methods. When I occassionally go back to writing a movie or music review these days it's with some gratitude and relief, because the subject matter's been provided for me, and in almost every case I have some strong ideas about how I feel about the subject going into it. </blockquote> You can also try thinking of a ending first, and then building towards it. A friend of mine who tried his hand at writing screenplays told me that a long time ago but to be honest I've never tried it. He had the same problem thogh, getting the opening down.

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