The Highs and Lows of Writing

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his Easter, in between trying to get some work done, I looked for ways to distract myself. After all, there’s only so much TV you can watch in one sitting before your brain turns to mush. So when I saw a message from one of my friends promoting a ‘new talents in prose’ website, I decided to take part, being somewhat of an aspiring writer.

The call was for any short form of writing. I intended to write a short story but, as I settled down to it, I also had the idea for a poem and elected to do both. The poem evolved from two avenues – reading a book on the bus that contained a hostage situation and the feeling of frustration I had at struggling to think of a rhyme for a word. In the end, it became the tale of a struggling poet who, in being unable to come up with an idea, decides to take a group of people hostage and have them help him. It culminated in a shootout, killing him. The descriptions rhymed with his demands, resulting in a poem that I had great fun writing. I think this may have been my first ever – I don’t normally have much to do with them.

The short story was a different matter and turned out to be an arduous job.

I remember reading somewhere that writers enjoy getting ready to write and the feeling of having written, but the bit in between is a trial. I echo that sentiment completely. My writer’s mind inclines towards crime fiction, so I planned a short story in this genre.

After having bulk-watched a lot of Columbo over the holiday, I decided to try an inverted murder mystery, where you know who did it and watch the detective catch them, which brought about its own issues. You need to think of a mystery that is solvable, but not too easy so as to offer the detective no challenge. You also need to come up with some sort of killer clue or circumstance that traps the murderer.

These things were not easy to do, and the mental strain of coming up with them took a lot of pleasure out of the writing process.

The story followed a university professor who despaired when his son intended to marry a woman he deemed unsuitable, and eventually he resolved to kill her. Coming up with the case was the simple part, finding a way to crack it was the problem. In the end, I made the father into an obsessive controller who absolutely loved his son and was forced to confess when the cover-up threatened to implicate his boy instead.

I really had to force myself to complete the story, and the feeling of pride at having finished (and at having producing 15000 words of something that wasn’t complete nonsense) did not quite compensate for the feeling of distaste I had from writing in the first place. The moment when I sent it off did make me rather happy though, like getting away from an annoying child.

A wide breadth of experience is always a good thing

So, what positives to the endeavours? It has encouraged me to look over some of my old plans and reconsider writing them, possibly as a summer project. I can plan happily – I clearly like ideas more than work. Knowing that I can sit down and force myself through something I am really not enjoying is handy and, as a humanities student, I’m told this will be a good trait for essay writing. Also, if I intend to go into a similar field in the future, it never hurts to have more experience of writing. I suppose, really, that this is just a tale of taking advantage of an opportunity presented, and that is always worth doing.

Image Credits: Header (Flickr/Kevin Hettinger), Image One (Facebook), Image Two (Flickr/Rilegator)