A Beginning

They say: "Just write . . ." or "write what you know". And apparently that's all you have to do to become a writer.

Well, I've been just writing for several years, and I have recently realized that I know nothing. That leaves me in a bit of a bind.

So far in the eight years I've been slogging away at this sodden keyboard, I've written three or four unfinished novels, several incomplete short stories, and a few partial poems. The writing doesn't seem to be the problem, the knowing things does.

My own background is a snore, and as I develop plots that take me away from the hum-drum of my life, I find myself constantly worried that my fiction will be unbelievable. I don't know enough about anything to make it seem real. Even the things I do every day, in my stumbling words, seem preposterous.

At least that's my excuse not to write. This time.

Sometimes I'm too busy, but I can't always sustain that one. Other times, I'm writing and then all of a sudden I find myself playing minesweeper or solitaire. It just happens. Then there'll be days when I know that I know nothing and I decide that research is the answer. Of course, research is actually the question -- the answer never seems to come.

I shall step away from the keyboard now and ponder my unwritten novel.

Tomorrow I won't procrastinate. I promise.