JM Hauser

I hate writing slumps.  I absolutely 100% hate them.  I don’t understand them for one thing, and I can’t see them coming until they’re already here, and I can’t see them going until they’re already gone. Does that make sense? Maybe not, it’s still early in the morning and this is stream of consciousness typing away with a caffeine buzz.  Anyway, I’ve not been writing much recently in my preferred manner of “stories or novels” although I have plenty to do.  Lots of stories, and maybe that’s part of the problem, the enormity of a project freezes me to inactivity rather than invigorating me to action.  And maybe it has to do with my frame of mind and attitude and emotional well-being. Sometimes negative thoughts like to torture me on a regular basis.

So that has left me with the enormous problem of how to fill my time with creative outlets so I don’t go kinda batty. Roleplaying games and creating stories and rules for those are one outlet, but I’ve spent so many years doing that, and while I know from experience that it is a massive time filler, and fun, ultimately very few people actually care.  I feel like my time and energy would be better suited to entertaining thousands or millions of people instead of just five or ten.

But back to my original premise – What To Write About When You’re Not Writing?  Well, there’s blogging like this, which is a borderline form of journaling + venting + bitching.  I guess if I actually had a fan base interested in this page it would be fun to read their feedback and answer comments, hell, I could make a career of doing just that and love it.  I could try and peck away at a story, but I know it just wouldn’t go anywhere.  My brain is filled with something like dirty cotton candy and the creative ideas just don’t flow.  I mean that special kind of FLOW, you writers out there know the Flow, when you’re so in the zone and time falls away and you’re working on something massively difficult but FUN and you know you’re doing it well.  Very little in the world is more satisfying than that except for great sex.  Or great drugs.  I guess the endorphin rush is the end result and what people crave, but there’s healthy vs. unhealthy ways of achieving it.

So What To Write About When You’re Not Writing?   That sounds like the title of a Self Help book,I have to admit.  Maybe I’ll write it one day!  You, know, instead of just blogging about writing it.