Sorry I haven't been posting as much. I'm in a rebuilding phase in life right now. Not depressed, just trying to sort out what I'm doing and how I'm gonna do it. At the moment I am also trying to write a short story, and I'm not succeeding very well.
Normally when I'm really working on something, I show up every morning and I sit down and I write thousands and thousands of words and then it goes nowhere and a month or two later I give up and work on something else that ends up coming to me immediately and with relatively little effort.
Which is why I say I've no idea how to actually write something. I think for years I've been trying to figure out how to capture the emotional core of a story. Which is actually a misnomer. I mean 'capture' isn't the right word. What I've been trying to do is figure out how to reliably write stories that have emotional cores: stories that make you feel something.
I'm done writing stories that are just typing exercises. Things that look and feel right but are dead inside. I want always to begin a story by having the core of something. Not a fully developed thought or idea or emotion maybe, but I want to feel compelled to write a story--I don't want to feel like I'm producing it only for ego or pecuniary reasons.
Which is all a very fine thing to say, but how is a person to actually DO that? I've decided that banging away uselessly at the typewriter obviously isn't the answer, but then what is? Long walks? Reading? Stretches of idly playing computer games?
I don't know. I think it has to involve interior examination. I need to find something in me that wants to come out. But that can't be the end of it. I'm not good at simply putting myself on the page. Some people can do that, but I can't. I need the focusing influence of some artificial story. I need to shine my experiences through the story and use my real emotions to power a story that never really happened (kinda like method acting!)
Or I don't know, maybe I need to do something else entirely.