I’ve been thinking of writing, lately. And I’ve been thinking of swearing off writing, lately.

I know I can write. That’s not really at issue. The problem is that I’m not so convinced I have anything to write about. I’m not a great storyteller. That’s not a pity plea. That’s simple truth. I’ve been actively thinking about and (somewhat less actively) working at writing for about six years now. To date, I’ve had two (count ‘em) ideas for novel-sized stories and five ideas for short stories.

Most of the time, when I most desperately want to write, it’s to capture a . . . feeling. When I read good fantasy, or a good comic, or watch a good movie, or have a good dream, there’s this feeling I get in my head . . . this longing for something bigger, this excited, expectant, on-edge, crazy, wonderful feeling that just makes me want to write, so that I can share the feeling with other people. But, in the end, that’s not enough. Story is about something—about something that happens. I approach writing from a place that is purely momentary and transitory, and to make it be anything, I have to string a series of those moments together into something coherent.

I suppose it’s no wonder that everything I’ve ever written has lacked plot.

So far this year, I’ve written one scene. It’s a pretty good scene, if I do say so myself. It’s tense and fear-full and deeply, intensely anxious. Which is exactly what I set out to make it. And everybody who’s read it wants to read more. And you know, when I started writing it? I could have sworn there was more. But I can’t for the life of me write another word on it. Try as I might, I just don’t know what happens next.

When I rebuilt this site (or, rather, built it from pieces of other sites), it was with the intent of publishing some ongoing original fiction. There was the Turos project I had come up with years ago (something pulpy in the Final Fantasy vein) and the Inspector Tournesol project I had invented specifically for this site (something like a cross between Inspector Gadget and Robert Asprin’s Myth books). Yes, I was intentionally trying for something a little less “serious” (or self-aggrandized, at least) than my usual attempts at literature. I was hoping that taking my writing less seriously would help. But it hasn’t. I still seem very short on concrete plot ideas. And worse, without the desire to do something good, the few plot ideas I do have don’t seem to interest me.

Even the non-fiction stuff I had planned to write about—the Re-examining My Faith stuff—I can’t seem to write. By the time I sit down to write about what I’ve been reading and thinking, my thinking has already changed so much as to make what I’d planned to write a lie.

Now, I’m not expecting that I’m alone in this problem. I’m not looking for pity or comfort. The world is full of would-be writers who don’t ever write anything. Perhaps I should just accept that I’m one of them and move on. It’s not like I don’t have lots of things to fill my time. Perhaps I should just start posting my daily rants about the hows and whys of my development projects, and give up on this site ever being anything other than the website of an obsessed programmer.

But there’s a part of me that would really like that: that part of me that doesn’t want me to write anything. And I’m not yet sure I’m willing to let him win. I don’t know, maybe I really do have nothing to write. Maybe I’ll write something and it will be crap. It’s totally possible. But surely I should at least do it once, before deciding. Wouldn’t that be a good idea?

Today, on a whim, I went and looked at Robin McKinley’s FAQ, and in it, she talks about how she spent a whole year thinking about The Blue Sword (one of my all-time favourite books) before spending another whole year writing it. The Outlaws of Sherwood took her five years to write. Now, I’m not claiming to be Robin’s equal in the writing department. I’m not. Even close. But that’s kind of my point—if a genius writer like her can take two or more years to produce a finished story, then maybe my expectations of myself have been . . . a little unrealistic. (No, that would never happen!)

So, maybe I’ll cut myself some slack, book some actual daily or weekly time, and just write. Forget the grand ideas of churning out a 3-days a week serialization, or a great novel, and just write. See where it goes. Write and polish and don’t worry about the time I’m spending or the time it’s taking. My first development project wasn’t a world-class compiler. Why should I expect my first writing project to be a publishable novel?

In the end, reality is what it is. I can accept it, and do my best . . . or worry and whine about it, and change nothing. The former would seem the more sane of my choices.