Learning To Write
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Posted by Colin Harvey Jun 23, 2009 |
For nineteen years, I had been unable to write after attending a Writer's Workshop .
In 1997 I came close to being made redundant. For months we came into work to do whatever tasks were necessary to close the business down. Some people came in late, went to the pub afterwards, or simply switched off. Perhaps it was denial that made me carry on as usual as far as possible.
But once my ever-dwindling work was done, what to do then?
By a happy coincidence, the internet was starting to take off, writers were putting their work up on-screen to read for free, and I had hours and hours when I had to be in work, but had no work to distract me. So I read voraciously, and processed what I read, and processed...
Even before the redundancy, I no longer enjoyed everything that was being published, becoming ever more dssatisfied with some of the fiction I was reading in Asimovs and F&SF, some of which even made the Hugo and Nebula Ballots. While I knew that some of the stories were flawed, I wasn't at first able to understand why, let alone articulate it.
I didn't even know what critiquing was, let alone how to do it -- but without consciously realizing what I was doing, I taught myself how to write structured stories by reading and unconsciously critiquing published fiction.
My writer's block ran from June 1978 to October 5th 1997. On the day of my father-in-law's 65th birthday I finally finished a flash piece barely a thousand words long I'd started a few days earlier. For two or three days I had expected to run into that familiar mental brick wall that always cropped up whenever I wrote a story, but this time, somehow, I blundered through to the end.
But I never forgot that feeling. Like an alcoholic, I know that I can fall off the wagon any day. So every day, I write something, however much of an effort it is. And that in itself creates its own pressure.