Writing is hard

"If I were psychic, you think I'd be writing? Writing is hard."

As part of my "I'm going to get back to writing on a regular basis" project, I've started to write a story. It isn't a novel or novella or even to short story length yet. I honestly have no idea how long it will end up being. But I'm working on it.

And I've realized that part of the reason I don't write stories is because writing is hard.

I've realized that I come up with great ideas while I'm working. I think of some interesting twists I want to incorporate into my story while I'm driving. I can create a character or story arc while I'm in dance. I have had some amazing dreams about scenes that would be amazing. But then, I sit down to write and there's nothing. There's something so easy about sitting down and writing a simple blog post. But taking an idea and creating a story out of it? That's hard.

I've also realized that I have a scene that I want to describe but when I go to actually write about a landscape, I get something more along the lines of "There's a tree" or "it is a person." I know that this is just part of the process, I need to focus on getting a rough draft out that at least outlines what I want before I can go back and really focus on details, but it is frustrating. Part of this is draw from the fact that I have all of these ideas that flit in and out of my head throughout the day and are gone by the time I sit down to write. I know that what I had thought about was a great scene, but I can't seem to remember what made it worthy of me actually putting it to paper.

I've also realize that one doesn't just simply sit down and write out a story and have every aspect of every character and every subplot worked out before hand. I know I'm still early in this whole writing process, but I understand what writers mean when they say that they have to let a character develop. Even in the early stages, preconceived notions that I have about characters aren't going to work out because these people are going to develop into "real" people.

And these problems are all part of the regular parts of writing. And this is why authors don't just pop out a book every couple of months. It takes time to not only create the story, but also to shape it and fine tune it into exactly what you want (and what the story wants).