Here's an introductory snip from one of the stories I'll be using in my fourth book. It's actually a story about dating sites!

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SPECIALIZED


Joe Schwartz is at work – ostensibly – in the insurance office he’s been with for the past six years. He’s leafing through this morning’s Chicago Sun-Times when the phone rings. He glances at the Caller ID box and sees his own name.

It’s his ex-wife, Sharon, calling from the home they shared for seven years, before the divorce was finalized a little over a month ago.

She still hasn’t called the phone company to get the number put in her own name....

“Yeah, Sharon, what is it?” He doesn’t want to come across as being mean or hostile -- the lawyer advised a sort of “detached tolerance” in their interactions—but he really doesn’t feel like talking to her right now.

I really haven’t felt like talking to her for...ages....

“Joe, you gotta help me. It’s the car.” Sharon got the good car, the house, the furniture, the two kids, and 80% of the money, in what the lawyers interestingly enough referred to as the “agreement.”

Joe loves that car. He squelches the realization that he’d rather help the car then help Sharon. “Why, what’s wrong, what’s it doing?”

“Oh, it’s making this noise, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like flub. Well, no, more like flub flub or flub flub flub. It repeats.”

He exhales slowly. “You should take it to the mechanic. T&J over on Loomis, they’re good.”

“I don’t want to deal with those people, Joe, they can always tell I don’t know anything about cars. They can see me coming, you know, then it’s an arm and a leg to fix something simple and stupid, probably, right? Just come over here and take a look at it and tell me what you think it is, OK?”

“OK, Sharon, I’ll drop by after work.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, then, “Oh, and, Joe – just because we’re divorced now doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, you know? Civil to one another. We’re still the same people we were when we got married.”

One of us isn’t, he thinks. But he doesn’t want to argue the point.

She goes on. “And I’m not the one who told you to go out and find a girlfriend, either. That was your own idea.”

And she’s right. I was bored, fed up with the same old wife, the same old stories, the same old in-laws, the same old everything, and I looked elsewhere for some entertainment.

As much as he’d like to turn it around, blame the whole thing on her, he knows he can’t. He made the choice, he found the new girlfriend (who knew he was married, who knew he was getting a divorce, and who summarily dumped him once she learned that he had lost the good car, the house, the furniture, and 80% of the money); he’s the one who broke the marriage vows.
Game, set, and match NOT made in Heaven.

“We don’t need to rehash this right now, Sharon. I’ll see you later.”

He hangs up.

The good old writer's block that many have talked about.

Do you believe them to be true or is it just a lame excuse writers use to not write anymore at the moment?


If you have suffered writer's block then what methods have you used to recreate the interest or perhaps the ideas on what to write to finish a project that you once started?

I think it's important to know where your story is going but still give yourself some breathing room to throw in hew twists and ideas if there's a way to fit them in.

The way I work is somewhat contrary to the way most of the experts recommend (big surprise, huh?) -- I start out with a very sketchy skeletal idea and fill lots of it in as I go along.


On a first draft, I would recommend not worrying too much about details like what color Omar's shirt is or how many tables are in the diner. Unless there's a specific plot-related reason for mentioning it, nobody generally cares too much about this sort of thing and it can be filled in later or (my own personal preference) ignored completely!

I resemble that style. When I started on the story again, I had a VERY vague idea of what I wanted to do with it. I just sort of let the story go where it wants.

I, like Lex, prefer to not go into a LOT of detail on most things. I really haven't even described the main character in my story. I know I am going to have to at some point, but for now, I prefer to leave what he looks like up to the reader.

I prefer to keep it that way for the majority of things in the world I created because, even though it's a world I made up, I want the reader to picture the world in the way THEY want to rather than lock them into MY vision of it.

i was signed up with the writers workshop and holy crap talk about email flooding!

I ended up having to bow out of the site.

Writers space was good. so was writer's digest.

i got alot of info and help from both of those sites :)

I think it would make a great thriller. I am a avid fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I have frequently emailed them in the past always asking for advice on how to write. Lincoln Child often replied and gave suggestions. Today they have such a huge fan base that I am lucky to get a email back from them. Nevertheless, their books are very entertaining to me at least.

You should really think about completing that story, unless you already have.

I am in the 7th chapter of the story

Oh wow! You are on a roll! Good work! Now do you have an outline of all the chapters or do you just write as you go?

John -- Here's a snip of something that I consider fun. Let me set this up -- a girl named Lyndsey has inadvertantly discovered a new color. No one else can see it. So she decides to take the piece of newspaper, on which the new color has been created, to school with her and see if anyone else notices it.

Actually, this particular bit is more about the art teacher, but it all ties together:

**********

On Monday, she takes the crinkled piece of newspaper to school with her. She has devised a way to test people on their ability to see the new color.

What she does is this: she tells each one that she has mixed some colors from existing paints, and she would like their opinion as to which of the mixed colors they feel would look best on a random product – a shirt, a wall, a car, etc.

She does not tell them that there are four mixed colors on the paper. She simply asks them to look at the blobs of paint they see, and decide which one they like best.

She figures that if anyone actually does see the new color, their reaction will give it away.

It doesn’t. No one sees it, or admits to seeing it. At the end of the day, the vote goes 14 for orange, 11 for blue, and 6 for gray.

She asks her English teacher, her history teacher, and her math teacher. None of them sees it, either.

Finally, she goes to the art teacher, a rotund, snowmanlike fellow named Mr. Chastain. (He is often drawn, by his students, with a carrot for a nose, and an old stovepipe hat.)

Mr. Chastain looks approvingly at the newspaper, holds it up in front of himself at different angles, making “mmmmmm” noises as he does so.

“Modern art,” he finally says, favoring Lyndsey with a brief grin. “It is made of nothing and everything, yet people tend to pooh-pooh it whenever they see it. Warhol could have told you that, he understood. A Brillo box. It is art, too, because it represents an aesthetic – a failed aesthetic, perhaps, but then a successful aesthetic generally ceases to be any kind of aesthetic at all.”

Lyndsey has no idea what the man is talking about. She suspects that, perhaps, he doesn’t either.

“A successful aesthetic – do you know what that becomes, Lyndsey? A trend, a tradition, a timeless and tedious inertia. It’s why we have two political parties, really. If you think about it. The common man has no stomach for subtlety, let alone choice, in any real sense of the word. The shame – the real and true crying shame – is that no one cares anymore. Art is art is art, no? No. It’s product, it’s a sellout. Self-sellout, really, because art is art is art is money now. Take out some of the extraneous arts, and art is money. Why? Because it represents the people who create it, and those people are all obsessed with money.”

She wants to interrupt him, but she is stumped as to how or when to make the attempt.

“Creativity has been put into a box, and then the box has been nailed shut. And buried. At sea, or maybe in space. Our creativity nowadays is like a gun with no bullets. You can hold it in your hand and threaten people, but it has no bite. There’s no ammo. All that’s left is a hand holding a gun, and a few memories of loud bangs.”

“Mr. Chastain, I wanted to ask you a question about this newspaper.”

“Hmmmmmm? Oh, yes, of course. I notice you have placed some colors onto a few small areas of the page. It strikes me as an indictment of the world at large. News is product no less than art is product. You combine the two, in a minimalist setting – small dots of color intruding on small bits of news. Reductio ad absurdum. At what point does the relevance, the meaning, the clarity, the direction, disappear altogether? Is this an extra credit project? I’ll tell you what, it shows an interesting perspective on art. The contrast, the colored spots on the black and white newsprint, this is a dichotomy. I like it. It’s good. It’s not MOMA good, but it’s good. I’ll give you a B+. How’s that?”

Lyndsey brushes her hair out of her eyes. “That’s great, Mr. Chastain, I could really use the extra credit, but I also wanted to ask you a question about the colors.”

The teacher peers at the paper again, turns it, shifts it, holds it above his head.

“I like the gray the best, to be honest. It has a sort of solid nobility to it. I could see wearing a suit that color, if I wanted to blend in somewhere and not be noticed. It’s a soothing color. The blue is a bit infantile for my tastes, and the orange is a bit too gaudy. I would say tone it down, add some yellow, make it less metallic.”

“And those are the only colors you see?”

Chastain looks again; and, for just a fraction of a second, Lyndsey is convinced that he sees something there, something different and unusual...

But no.

“Newsprint, a few grainy photos, and a bad drawing of the sun up in the corner with the weather forecast. Oh, and there seems to be an empty white spot for some reason. But I don’t see any more colors.”

He offers the newspaper page back to her. She takes it, and sighs. “OK, thanks, Mr. Chastain. I will think about what you said....”

....until I understand it, which will probably take another 4000 years....

Just a question to the OP and rest here,,You have all read some of me on here.
I have no great talent with english skills,,,,but?

Do you THINK,,I could write a book,,in most of my ways of writting on here. And have it read or sold to make any money from it?

I have thought about it for a couple of years now.

My Life, on a single's site.

TRUST ME, YOU won't hurt my feelings if you said, 'I SUCK'.

I just would like an honest answer to this and me,wink...

from,,the best writers, readers, we have here,,,,YOU GUYS!,Wink.