Of course this is always the way things start. I come up with a big idea, and a few days later it dies on the vine like a sun-withered grape.
I've been having this nagging feeling that I need to do something spectacular. Not really spectacular but memorable. My first thoughts were how I would like to write comedy. Like for stand-up comedians or TV. I don't think I could be a stand up comedian. I'm not sure I could even try it. I would have to work up some material first and so now I'm back to being a writer first.
I thought I would join a local humor writers group and try to meet some other creative people. So I looked around, did some internet research and didn't find any humor writers groups in Orlando.
Then the idea of writing humor for stand-up morphed into just humor writing. I thought how great it would be to be a humor writer. Like Dave Barry I would write 850 words and be droll and humorous and have everyone read my words and laugh. That sounded so good.
So I go on the internet and do a little research. I join the humor writers group on Yahoo. I check out the Erma Bombeck Writers seminar. It turns out it's only offered every two years and it was just held this year. So it will be 2008 before I can go to that. So I struggled for ideas.
What would I write about? I checked Dave Barry's latest column. He wrote about him and his wife visiting Napa Valley and visiting all the great wineries. So that's just great.
They say write what you know. Well, my mundane driving home from work and digging a trench in my yard can't hold a candle to the natural humor in making fun of the snooty wine country people and places.
I always thought I would write non-fiction because it seems to be a lot easier to gather up a bunch of facts than to be creative and make something up. I mean the non-fiction book is practically already written. But then I came to the realization that it's so much work. All that research. Spending hours in the library. Getting books through interlibrary loan. Reading all those books. Writing and rewriting. Christ, if I wanted to do all that work I should just have stayed in Graduate school.
Then the humor writer urge gave way to fiction. I'm thinking I can write a novel. So I act on the new urge and dash over to Borders on my lunch half hour and spend twenty dollars on a book on novel writing. That was two days ago. I haven't read more than ten words out of the book. My excuse? I haven't had time.
I visited the Yahoo and Google groups and promptly became discouraged. There are so many of them! One for every type of person. In fact, there are some groups with only 3 people in them. Why have a group if there's only going to be three people in it.
Then I found a web site full of writing competitions. I thought I would enter a competition for a 3000 word fiction piece. You know the original idea for the movie Brokeback Mountain was a short story. It's due at the end of January. 3000 words is only six pages. Certainly I should be able to do that. I mean tomorrow is December first. I should have enough time. It's for some literary journal in Oregon. Now that it's time to get down to brass tacks and get it started, I can't seem to even get started
Story ideas anyone? The whole thing seems to be hard. Coming up with a good idea is not easy and lord knows writing the thing can't be easy. Can you say ten re-writes?