Writer’s Block

writing

Feb 16

I don’t think I get this bug. I do get periods where the story I’m working on is either frustratingly unexciting, or unexcitingly frustrating to me, and I really wanna bag it – so I do.

When a key character doesn’t have enough dimension, it just doesn’t come to life, so the scenes in which the character participates just don’t breathe air. They just don’t hit, and I hit the wall in the race of life. I just don’t care enough to keep writing about any of it.

But then, I can’t ever stop thinking about the mechanics of that particular story, and wondering what’s the problem? With pen and paper, I start talking to myself – in Q & A format. Typically, I find out that I haven’t developed a key character so it really lives – really hits.

Joe Smolen

Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.

https://joecsmolen.com

Writer’s Block

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