Losing the Fire

Lee Pletzers, NZ own Horror Writer of The Last Church and the soon to be released The Game has provided this guest Blog.

It can happen and it doesn’t happen suddenly but it can happen to anyone. That burning desire to write, that need to feed words onto the paper, can seem to vanish in an instant. I noticed my loss of interest several months back.

This loss was mentioned on my blog once, but those who replied logged it under Writer’s Block. It is not Writer’s Block. It is worse.

We all know what writer’s block is:

1. an inability to find words
2. a psychological inhibition preventing a writer from proceeding with a piece of writing
3. the inability to sit at a word processor without throwing yourself back in revulsion (Stephen King’s Bag of Bones)
4. The inability to find the correct word to use (Throw Mama from the Train – the best movie on writer’s block ever)

But what is a Lack of interest? How does it differ from the dreaded writer’s block?

1. Having hundreds of words at one’s disposal
2. A psychological need/want to see your words on paper (Koontz disease)
3. Always sitting at a word processor, always thinking I should be writing
4. The ability to let one’s fingers do the walking (Collins English Dictionary Complete and unabridged)

Thinking back, I wondered how this ‘seemingly’ sudden lack of interest started. There had to be a catalyst, but what was it and how could I destroy it? I recently had a Waitangi Day zombie twist short story accepted. I was working a lot of overtime to save money to start my business. I was getting good stories for an anthology I was editing with Karen Johnson Mead and Robert G. Male. And many other little things. Maybe I was bridging exhaustion.

Meanwhile, my head was alive with ideas on where to continue my novel, Genesis 2.0. The ideas were there and I was often thinking about the book. I had a very strong desire to get into it, add meat to the skeleton and make it scream. But every time I sat at the computer and opened my writing software, I would suddenly remember something else that needed doing and head off to do that (EG build web pages for the company, books, my site updated) and it usually took all my remaining free time.

When I did find time on my hands, I searched the Internet for nothing and found heaps of nothing to scroll through. My eyes would grow heavy ‘cause I was so bored and just wasting time. I often looked at the writing software icon but couldn’t bring myself to open it and start. I had an idea for a short story and didn’t get around to writing it and then the deadline passed.

I was tired and that little devil called self doubt reared its ugly head and it’s a good one for killing the writing spirit. It makes you question everything about your work. Are you good enough? Will you make it?

Visiting a bookstore with this problem can be a killer. You look at several books you’d like to buy and reading the first few pages you put the book down. The writing is terrible. It’s all tell and no show. Where’s the heart, the soul, the images these words are meant to paint? Aren’t we all told, ‘Show, don’t tell’? Describe the scene. She screamed in horror. Terrible. She screamed as the hot poker seared her skin. Hmm, better, needs work.  Her heart hammered her already bruised ribs; each beat was loud thump in the silent room. Surely he could hear it. She wanted it to slow down, grow quiet in an attempt to show she wasn’t afraid, but her nerves were failing her. She was terrified. She could only see the man’s back. He wore baggy trousers and a dirty singlet. He was kneeling in front of the fireplace jabbing at the coals with a poker. He turned to face her, a smile on his lips. It sent a shiver of ice sliding down her spine. If she wasn’t bound to the radiator, she would run, or attack or do something, anything. Her only weapon was her voice, and as her brought the poker to her, its tip red hot, she screamed.  It still needs work but it is much better than telling me she screamed in horror.

Then the inevitable question arises: How did this get published?

This is always followed by the silent wondering: ...and mine didn’t? It’s the same publisher.

Self doubt is vicious. And it had its claws in my back and its mouth around my throat. It took awhile but I realised I had stopped work on my novel a long time ago. A year at least. I told myself I wanted to take time off to write some short stories, try to get them published and try to hit that magical number of 50 shorts published, then I could aim for 100 a couple of novels later. But apart from a short writing stint on my holiday in Japan, I didn’t feel like writing.

The passion was gone.

The real question was: How to get it back? Could the passion be relit, can that strange fire burn again? I didn’t have an answer to these questions.

I have always believed that to be a writer one must have talent. Technique can be taught but everything else that goes into being a writer needs to come from inside you.  We have a self belief gene that functions all the time, regardless of what the writer is going through. Be it a dry patch or a block. That belief in oneself is very strong, nearly unbreakable. A writer has a different mind-set to other people (some refer to this as drive). This can’t be taught but it comes from (I believe) habit.

To get the passion back, one first needs to get the habit back. See how this is different to writer’s block. A lack of interest may be a sub-category of writer’s block, who knows for sure? Not me. I call it as I see it.

I am in the process of rebuilding my passion.

What did I do that rekindled the flame? That’s simple: I read what I wrote and loved it. I started thinking: Shit, I came up with that. I’ve been going through a proof edit of my coming novel, The Game, and found myself having to re-read sections as I got lost in my own tale. I can up with a movie idea and things are moving forward in that area and an idea for a (as yet unannounced) anthology has been growing in my mind and is near ready for insertion via keyboard.

But I still haven’t written anything until Karen asked me to write something for the SoCNoC blog on Kiwi Writers. I think this is a tad long for a blog entry but I felt it is something that happens or may happen to each of us one day. And there aren’t any articles or blogs that go into this (I could only find writer’s block articles) and I felt this is something that needs to be put out there.

It’s happened to me. It could happen to you, when you least expect it.

Remember, self doubt creeps up on you. You may not notice it. For me it was a collection of overwork, tiredness, and shock at some of the dross hitting our bookstores. All it takes are a few little things to hit you at the wrong moment and make you wonder: Am I wasting my time?