Published July 13, 2007
Grace sat at her computer, the blank screen staring up at her. She sighed, and began playing with the pen on her desk, rolling it up and down and doodlling on a piece of paper she had ripped out of her diary.
Grace had experienced days like this. The days where no inspiration came to her and she spent hours upon hours just staring at a blank computer screen.
This was the reason her parents didn't want Grace to become a writer. 'You'll waste away in front of that computer,' they said when Grace told them. Grace had never believed them, until now.
inally, Grace placed her fingers on the keyboard and started typing. She typed for 20 minutes, and then read over what she had written. It was horrible, a poem about a killer computer. Grace was disgusted with herself for writing something so stupid.
Grace stood up. She wrapped her coat around herself and ventured out of her flat, for inspiration. Everywhere she looked, Grace thouight of a hundred new ideas. Smiling, she sat on a park bench and began to write in her little notebook. After writing a page, Grace looked over the words. It was horrible, a short piece about the mind of an ant. She tore out the piece of paper and scrunched it up.
'Maybe I'm not meant to be a writer,' she thought in the end. The breeze nipped at her as she walked back to her flat. She sat down in front of the computer and began to write. She wrote for a long time, and then read over her work, smiling.
Writers block. Can it get any worse? Is there a medication for writers block? I have experienced many days where whenever I put something down on paper, it sound horrible. But don't chuck out that poem about the killer computers, or that piece about the mind of an ant. You never know, they could become inspiration for the most amazing composition ever written...
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139,409 Literary Works • 672,558 Reviews
Hello!
RandomTalks here with a short review!
You have presented a very common topic here and I think every writer can relate to it. If you are a writer, chances are you have struggled with writer's block at some point in time or you are struggling right now. I have not yet met a single writer who hasn't gone through this before, and I think its a all a part of the process of being a writer.
That said, I want to echo what another reviewer. Because we are all writers here, we can relate to this piece of work and the character's frustration reflect the same that we have felt before. However, other readers who probably have not experienced a writer's block may het bored very easily with this text. Because this entire piece is based around Grace's inability to write something decent, they might not get what the big deal is about and the story might end up as very unmemorable to them.
You have probably heard of the expression 'show, don't tell'. That is exactly what you need to do here. All throughout the piece, we are told that Grace cannot write, that she is disgusted by every word she writes. However, we cannot actually feel her frustration because you did not explore her emotions in that deeper level. We know she is disgusted, but what else is she feeling? Is she frustrated? Is she feeling worthless? Is all this taking a hit on her self-esteem? There are so many emotional grounds to cover when it comes to writer's block and I feel that you skipped through them all to jump to the very ending.
There is an entire transition completely missing here. We see that Grace is unable to write, she tries several times and fails. And then suddenly she comes back to her flat and she can write again. What inspired her? Did the walk back home replenish her creativity or did it give her some fresh ideas to explore or even just a new perspective? How did she get out of the writer's block? Yo have presented a struggled here but you have skipped over the entire conflict and the process of getting out of it. As a result the story feels rather anti-climatic and incomplete and we do not know what we are supposed to take out of it.
Overall, this was a good attempt at capturing something every writer goes through. However, I feel if you take each of your sentences and expand on them, you will end up with a much better story. Because, right now, this only feels like an outline of the story we wanted to read. You have to present a resolution for your conflict, otherwise it fails to carry the same message.
Keep writing and have a great day!
Ah yes! I'm going to expand on what razorblade said, (I was supposed to put it in mine, but I forgot :O)
The fun thing about third person is that you get to see everybody from an outside, mostly unbiased opinion. You got that, I'm sure. But the trick to such technique, is balancing names vs. pronouns. Grace vs. She.
I'm sure you can replace the majority of the Grace's in here with she. Seeing as 'she' is your main character and we don't get the confuzing dialouge who's talking thing.
Basically what I'm trying to say is...In third person, the key is to only say the name when your reader may be confused about who your talking about. If there's more than one person in the scene, or if it's dialouge. This is just a rule-of-thumb-thing, and as you get more comfortable using it you can mix it up a bit, but it works. Trust me =D
Still, good work though!
-JC
Well, JC kinda beat me to it. But she did miss a few things.
I think you mean Finally.
Also, you said "Grace" waaaaaaay too many times. Replace a few of them with pronouns. They're your friend.
-St. Razorblade
You can improve the flow of this by replacing the 'and' with a comma and taking out the word 'had'.
If this is supposed to be dialouge (normally flashback phrases aren't exactly that...), then it's fine. But if it isn't supposed to be viewed as dialouge, then you should move the comma to be after the second ' thingy.
Capatalize Initially
Nix the comma.
Same thing as before =D. Or, this really cool thing soe writers do (I'm not sure if it's arule per-say) is they put thoughts in italics. You can consider that =D
_______________________________________________
This was typical bored writer with nothing to write about material. Not to say it was bad. It can be polished up a bit, but it's not really anything more than boredom...and that's how it came across, like you wanted the reader to be bored. Fortunently, we're all writers here, so we can relate to your character, anybody else would probably find it rather dull. The writing's good though.
-JC
This kind of sounds like an ad against drunk driving or something...you know...the ones where they tell the story about how, "Mary had never been to a party before. She didn't realize that it would be her last..." okay, not so morbid, but you get the point. Is that what you were going for? Because it's okay if you were.
I will also add that the last part, when Grace has the wind on her face, is confusing. At least it was for me because I didn't realize she was outside. Perhaps you could mention that at the beginning.
I'm not sure exactly what you're going for with this, but writer's block is a classic topic we can all relate to.