However, I still remembered the idea when I got home from work, so I started writing the post. But after writing the first sentence.... I was stuck. And I had other things to do. So it got put off for a few days.
When I finally got around to writing it again today, I discovered something. It wasn't quite as funny as I wanted it to be. It wasn't witty. It was boring and it didn't quite make sense. I couldn't write this post anymore.
This made me very sad, because my idea showed so much hope and promise, and it was all quite true to life and happiness and rainbows and growing up.
But my delivery would not have been very good, so I didn't write it, thereby sparing you. And me.
It's a sad moment when a writer has to face the fact that their idea really doesn't work. However, trying to work through or around that idea can be even harder. Like how I'm trying to write this post right now. I feel like all my creativity has been depleted, since I couldn't come up with an answer for how to write the post I originally wanted to.
This is also known as writer's block. Which really isn't very fun at all. My friend Amber is sitting next to me write now, trying to write the next chapter for our story, and she's having writer's block. We're both stuck, somewhere where we don't want to be, with not much of an idea of where we're going.
I mean, we're both listening to the Piano Guys, and their super motivating music, and it's not helping us.
Update: Amber decided that she should not work on our chapter at the moment until she gets her groove back and can write something that makes sense. She's writing a different story, and suddenly she turns to me and goes:
"I love how random questions come up in my story. Like, what diseases do sheep get?"
In a fit of brilliance, I start naming off ways sheep could get sick, and possible diseases they could get. I then ask her how on earth that came up in her story. She explains that some farmer's flock of sheep just had about half of them die.
My response?
"Poison."
Immediately. I just assume poison. This is what happens to you when you become a writer. Unless maybe you write children's stories. I also start listing off other ways half a flock of sheep could suddenly die. I can't finish a simple blog post, but I can easily list, off the top of my head, with no research whatsoever, half a dozen or so ways to kill a large group of sheep.
This is what sucks about writer's block. At this moment I can help solve everyone else's problems, but I cannot solve the problem of what to write about in a simple blog post.
However, with this conversation, I was suddenly struck by a way to end this post. I would talk about this conversation and how sometimes the solution to writer's block sometimes comes in unexpected ways.
So, if you're ever stuck with writer's block.....
Kill half a flock of sheep half a dozen ways. Maybe you'll figure out how to start that blog post.
No sheep were harmed in the making of this blog post.
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