Observations - Writer's Block

 I wrote quite alot when I was much younger than I am now. Nothing special. I wrote my first fanfics about the Care Bears when I was still in single digits. Later, in my teenage years, I wrote stuff other people actually read. More fanfic, but then, coming up with original ideas was never my strength, though I frequently wish it was.

I don't write much any more, and that's been something quite frustrating to me. At least, I should say, I don't write complete stories. I obviously write social media posts, and I write down my thoughts of the world, but stories in my favorite genres, sci-fi and fantasy, elude me.

I sometimes feel like I have the motivation and yet, the time comes, I have nothing to say. At least when it comes to telling a story.

Now, what I do seem to be good at is write little scraps and bit of text to paint a picture, but it's a picture that never seems to go anywhere. I have plenty of files on my system that are just a few paragraphs long, setting up the beginning of what might promise to be an epic adventure, and yet, I never seem to get back to them. I never seem to know where to go next. It gets quite frustrating.

I'll give you an example. Look below. I cranked that out in fifteen minutes, just now off the top of my head. I'm sure it needs to be edited and polished up and such, but it could be the beginning of something great. It teases at something that could happen, but probably won't.

One of my local game shops is holding a writer's workshop in a couple weeks. Perhaps I will go. I try to attend such things when I can to hopefully get ideas and motivation. It would be nice if I could share my visions of my fantasy worlds with other people someday.

 

---

 

She stood atop the castle wall, staring into the distance. A storm was coming, she knew. This morning was the calm that came before. She was a seasoned old warrior with far too many summers come and gone for her to still be alive. People who fought for a living, soldiers, sellswords, military leaders...all seemed to die relatively young in life, even the good ones. Yet, here she was.

Far in the distance, she could see the gathering clouds that would bring with them, thunder, lightning and chaos. The enemy had a reputation for always attacking during bad weather, even to the point of employing a mage to make it so. They would be coming with the approaching storm, bringing one of their own along with it.

It was interesting to her to consider how quiet it was. Oh, the people in the castle behind her were busy getting ready for what she hoped would not be a hopeless battle, making plenty of noise doing so. Yet up here it was quiet and still at the moment. In this moment in time, there was peace. Such a fragile thing peace was. She would savior it as long as she could.

She let her gaze fall to the stone wall in front of her on which her hands rested. The castle was quite old, made of the strongest stone they could use at the time, although now it had become weathered with age. She studied the almost insignificant cracks, scuffs, and little bits of gravel and chipped pieces that had come with time, weather, and battle. The castle had held up well thus far. How many more cracks, or scuffs, or even blood, would this stone have on it when the battle was over, she wondered. Would she still be alive to see it.

Perhaps she would return to the wall when it was all over. Perhaps she would return to this stone, to see if it survived. perhaps making such a promise to herself would keep her alive as well. She had little else to fight for. Fighting was what she did best in life. It always had been, and now, after so many summers, it was all she had. It was who she was.

She gripped the hilt of the sword in his scabbard on her waist. It was an old friend that seen almost as much battle as she had, and yet, thanks to the care she had poured into it, it still looked nearly brand new.

She closed her eyes then and offered up a silent prayer to the god to whom she owed her loyalty and her very soul. Then, with a deep breath, she turned and, almost reluctantly, left the relative quiet of the top of the wall to descend into the noise and activity below.

Would she see the dawn tomorrow? It was impossible to know.

Observations - Nothing is Easy

 I want to open this Blog with something I wrote on Facebook a couple years back. Or least this is based on something I wrote.

Consider for a moment, that nothing in this world is easy. Nothing. Not even breathing is easy. Certainly there are plenty of things that are easy for some people, but my challenge to all of humanity is to name me something that is easy for absolutely everyone on the planet to do, without exception.

I bet people couldn't name a single thing...or if they did, i bet I could prove them wrong.

Consider, also, how often a very well-meaning person tries to help another by beginning their statement with "Well, it's easy."

I've used this phrase myself plenty of times in my life when offering my help to someone and it wasn't until more recent years that it occurred to me that, well-meaning though I am, it's not really the best phrase to open with. After all, if it were easy, the person I'm helping wouldn't need help in the first place.

We say it often because we wish to be encouraging and to suggest that it could be easy once properly learned, but remember that anything one person finds easy, another may not. It's also entirely possible that they never will.

This is something that applies to everything, and I do mean everything.

IT work, accounting, heart surgery, retail sales, fast food work, being an astronaut, join the military, thinking guns are good, thinking guns are evil, political positions, having religious beliefs, being an atheist, supporting one person over another, shopping at a grocery store, deciding how many days of food you need to buy, creating a budget, driving a car, buying a car, maintaining a car, living a life without a car, deciding what you want to do for lunch, deciding if you want to go movies, to the mall, or just walk around the block, hanging out with friends, making friends, using correct social labels, understanding what such labels even mean, using correct gender pronouns, talking to people, talking to strangers, talking to people you know, leaving the house, picking up a piece of trash on the street, picking one up in your own home, taking care of basic hygiene, waking up in the morning, choosing the right clothes to wear, deciding what to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon...

 

"Well, it's easy" can not be applied to any aspect of human existence no matter how simple it might seem. What is easy to one is not always easy to others no matter how simple it seems. 

Try to consider this when dealing with others. Consider that what is easy for you may not be easy for them. Perhaps it will become easy with time, or perhaps it never will be easy for them. We're all different people with our own strengths, our own weaknesses. These aspects, by themselves, don't make a person good or bad. It just makes them human.