I Have the Ideas, But Can’t Find the Words
A writer’s dilemma
Years ago, before I decided to take the plunge into the frigid freelancing waters, I thought (naively) that the hardest part about writing was coming up with ideas.
Where does [insert author name here] come up with this stuff? I’d wonder, while reading my latest selection from the library. I’d envy the novelist’s imagination, wishing that I too could come up with so many exciting plot lines.
Silly me.
Now that I’m doing the writing thing full-time, I realize it’s not the ideas that are tough, but the execution of said ideas. I have 51 drafts saved in Medium. I have a list of 130 additional ideas in an excel spreadsheet. And then there are the 35 or so ideas I have in an app on my phone.
Every time I turn around, I stumble over an idea. My son loves reading: essay for parenting magazine! My cats are fighting: blog post! My head starts pounding: article on migraines for a women’s health website! That creepy house we drive by every so often: short story! Pretty much every moment of my day could be turned into an idea for some piece or another.
The trick isn’t coming up with topics, it’s figuring out how to write about them. Those 51 drafts in Medium are all attempts to get to the core of some issue I want to address…
