By: Sophisticated

Have you ever had such a hard time writing that it makes you physically upset? Like kicking, punching your bed, almost in tears frustrated. The kind of frustrated I can only assume babies go through when they are too young to communicate something they need. And sometimes thats how writers block makes me feel. Like a baby that cant communicate correctly. I know what I want to happen, I know how I want it to happen, but I have no idea how to write it down.

Recently Ive been working on a piece called “Awake”, it is about two girls i a college psychology class performing an experiment on controlling dreams. Something called Lucid Dreaming. The goal of this would be to allow people to solve problems in their sleep, maybe giving people more time to solve world problems. But Im having a hard time setting this up. I know I would like to have a specific twist somewhere… but where? How do I start it? I have to go through my whole process forty times before Im happy with how Ive laid out the story. And even then, I change it fifty more times because Ive made changes down the road.

So heres my process. What would I like the story to be? Once I have that figured out, I can create a start to the story. So, for my “Awake” piece, I would like the story to be a cautionary tale about how you should not mess with the subconscious mind. So the start to my story has to be able to explain the experiment and foreshadow what is to come. Next I make characters. WHat does Addie look like? What does Cassie look like? To make characters, I really just start imagining somebody. Nobody specific, but i like to add in strange details like Cassie having an Oswego sweatshirt even though nobody in her family has ever been to Oswego, Id love to be able to give this profound reason as to why I like doing this, but I don’t have one. I think it just makes the characters more relatable, and makes the inner monologue of the speaker more in depth.

At this point, I just have to write. I have to keep writing, because once I start, details start to fill in on their own for me. The problem is I cant stop once I have started, or I will lose the momentum and forget what I was trying to get at. Once I find a place I am happy to stop, i look for feedback. In this piece, I was told that there are similarities to the movie Inception, which is something I would like to avoid. This sparked me re-planning my entire piece from beginning to end. But in the end, I think my changes made the story much better. Peer review can sometimes really open your mind up. I have my story linked here if you would like to read it. This is only what I have so far.

Thank you, comments would be appreciated.