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I want so badly to create. This urge inside me to make worlds appear on paper is… itchy. Not the casual kind of passing itch where you scratch and it’s gone. No. This is a soul-deep, crawling under my skin, “no sleep ‘till Brooklyn” level itch that cannot be scratched without the production of words. Last week, I went to another of Adam’s Ghost Writing workshops. If I haven’t said it enough already, Adam Robinson is amazing. He has a gift for coaxing words out of people when they didn’t know those words existed. In each of his workshops, he includes three separate, short writing sessions. He selects three volunteers after each session and reads their work aloud. I never volunteer for these things, especially not without lots of time to edit, refine, and translate my work into something resembling English. I don’t know what came over me. I volunteered. It was amazing! He read my words—a scene I hadn’t thought up seven minutes prior in a genre I’ve never attempted—out loud where other people could hear it. He had thoughts and feelings about the characters. He did on-the-spot analysis of the depth of relationships in this thing I blindly typed in six minutes. People didn’t laugh and for a moment, I honestly wondered if I was still conscious. Some days are like that one and others, I can sit for hours and not one letter appears. It’s important to keep trying, even if all you’re doing is staring at a wall. Even when you think you have no ideas, when nothing’s happening inside your brain because you’re so exhausted just existing. When you least expect it, you’ll create something you never thought you could.
You’ll be your own inspiration.
Fiction projects: 1 Fiction words this week: 350 Adam Robinson runs free, live workshops through Facebook on Fridays at 7pm, BST. Most weeks, he does repeat live workshops on Wednesdays. You can find his page at The Book of Darkness & Light.
About the author: Theresa Green is the co-founder of The Writer's Workout and a crime fiction writer.