Writing Lab: Full of Stories, Full of Stars

Head of a Young Woman - Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Prompt: "Do you have a lot of untold stories inside of you? How do you feel carrying them around?"

Well, any writer is full of stories to at least some extent and I'm certainly no exception. I don't get writer's block as far as ideas go. I'd even go so far as to say that I come up with at least a couple of viable new ideas a week. However, I'm not terribly disciplined about doing much with any of them. Some of that has to do with how much of my writing energy gets poured into things for my clients these days, but the rest of it is just sheer laziness and apathy.

That said, I do have a lot of untold stories living inside of me to one extent or another. How does it make me feel? Perpetually bloated and full, like a person feels when they overeat at Thanksgiving. On the one hand, there's a satisfaction to feeling that full, because when you're full you're the very furthest thing from empty. On the other, it can be incredibly uncomfortable at the same time. You know it's not normal or healthy to be overstuffed to that extent. I do talk about ideas and whatnot to some extent, which helps. However, verbal conversation and Facebook are really no substitutes for proper stories and poems written on the regular.

I would also say that I have certain stories inside of me that have sort of been told, but not in their entirety and not the way I want. Not yet. One of the things I'd most like to write at some point is a memoir (or perhaps a series of them). But like a lot of would-be memoir writers, I know there would be a lot of fallout as far as my family and social circles go. There aren't many people from my past that would be very happy with the way they were portrayed. At all. That said, I go back and forth between not really giving a shit what those people think and wondering if it might not be better to just wait until at least my parents and in-laws pass on.

One thing about getting older though. You start to realize that you really don't have forever if you want to put something out there or take a real stab at being published in a way that actually matters. Not that ghostwriting for my clients and blogging in my spare time isn't rewarding in its own way. It's just not fulfilling in quite the way I think producing more important work would be.