Gooooooooooood Morning, Horror Lovers!!! How are we today?
I figured I’d take a step back for a minute and talk about this massive pain in the ass I’ve been struggling with. I’m talking about that bastard known as WRITER’S BLOCK!
I’ve been having trouble getting back into the gory battle that is Horror Writing. At first I thought that it would be nice to take a break and focus on other things. I love you all but I do have a life outside of this blog and twitter. I was focused on finding a job, making sure I had the requirements to go to grad school, helping my mother out with her errands, church, etc. Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t written anything is so long. It got worse when I realized that the flash drive where I stored ALL of my work and been corrupted.
That felt like a punch to the lady nuts! Ouch! I had short stories, novellas, and ideas for novels stored on that thing. I wanted to cry. But I figured that there’s nothing I could do so I left it. I figured that maybe it was an opportunity to start fresh and create some new stories. That didn’t work out either. I just kept thinking about all my unfinished work trapped in a corrupted file. If there’s one thing I absolutely hate, it’s an unfinished project.
Since there was nothing I could really do, I decided that maybe now would be a good time to pick up a book and get lost in it. Damsel Cannibal has often recommended H.P. Lovecraft to me but I never got around to it. So the next time I headed to Barnes & Noble I picked up the first volume of the comic book HELLBLAZER and THE CALL OF CTHULU AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES. I must say I was hooked! I haven’t finished the whole thing yet but so far THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER is my favorite. I also didn’t realize that the ’80s movie REANIMATOR was based off of a Lovecraft story. I have seen that one and I think I’ll review it later.
Anyway, I was reading Lovecraft’s dark tales when all of a sudden I found it. I found my inspiration! Queue “You’re The Inspiration” by Chicago! I realized that while my finished works on my flash drive were gone…I still had the first drafts written down in notebooks. That’s how I like to write. I love taking a pen and putting it on paper. It also allows me to make notes and doodles in the margins. So I pulled out everything I’ve ever written and started marking what I wanted to edit and what I wanted to scrap.
I’m happy to announce that I’m back in the game! I’ve been going back to the short stories that I really loved and giving them the proper attention that they needed. Maybe losing all my work on the flash drive was the Universe saying that it was crap and I could to better. So I’ll be squeezing in time to write and send out submissions.
How about you guys? Have you ever had to wrestle with the Writer’s Block Monster? How do my fellow writers and artists stay motivated?
Damsels With Chainsaws 