Fallow time can bite my shiny metal @$$
I have an entire novella in my head, just ready to be written, but every time I sit down to write it a get a few paragraphs and it peters out because the voice isn’t there and what I’m writing is just serviceable.
I’m a good technician! I can write serviceable prose all day! Here I am, writing serviceable prose right now!
But serviceable isn’t good enough for a piece of fiction. It needs to pop.
(I feel like both Carmy and Sydney in The Bear, looking at each other over various complicated food preparations and asking “Is that something?” And right now, no, it isn’t something. The idea is something: the narrative is solid. It just isn’t ready to catch fire.)
The problem, of course, is that I did an enormous amount of work over the past fourteen months or so and my brain needs some down time. I more or less gave it the entire month of March, and I am booooored as hell, but the verve hasn’t come back.
And of course, once I have sufficient rest, the story will probably pour out of me like water. I need to bide my time and wait for it. Settle in and lurk in the tall grass until the prey comes by.
The thing is, I hate it. I hate waiting. I hate the time when I have to wait for ideas to regenerate, for my brain to refill from the reservoir of experience And Stuff.
I want to be writing this story NOW.
And yet, there’s no way past it. Writing is a self-exhaustive act. You take everything you are made of, everything you have done and felt and experienced, and dredge it up and and pump it out and arrange it on the page so that other people can experience, too.
So the frustrations of fallow time it is, and I’m going to go clear a few more boxes out of the storage room, since we finally have shelves in the library after living in this house for eight years. :D
Boredom is good for your creativity.