I have written some Halloween stories that I plan to post here on my blog, so I figured I should lay the groundwork first.

I am not a guts and gore type of writer. It is just not how I think. But beware. (The next sentence may be a bit of a spoiler.) One of my stories has a little bit of gore. (Now, back to the rest of the story.)

I wrote the stories that are to come as prompts for DailyPrompt. Which, as I have said before, is a great website (and app) that I use to just have some fun writing. Some different fun. After all, I have great fun writing regardless of whether it is writing this blog or writing a poem or writing a book. I love to write. It is just part of who I am. But there is something about writing to a prompt.

The thing that I like about writing to a prompt is that it forces me to think of stories and poems in a different way. Instead of creating something completely from scratch, I get to start with the seed of an idea. Which is normal, mind you. That is actually how I write. I get an idea or the seed of an idea and the story comes. Not necessarily all at once, but it eventually comes. For instance, I have been writing one story in my head for nearly thirty years. I even wrote the beginning, but it stalled. Now, the ending finally came to me, so I just need to finish writing it. Along with all the other stories that I still need to start, finish, edit, or work on in whatever state it is in.

I treat the DailyPrompt prompts as a challenge. A challenge to create a complete story or complete poem in a sitting. I do not do it every day anymore. (I did for over 100 days, skipping most Sundays, and came out with a book of those stories and poems. Hint hint.) Instead, I pick and choose the ones that I want to write something for. I write a poem about this or short story about that. It is great fun.

Which is how I came to write some stories out of my norm. Maybe even a little out of my comfort zone. They were great fun though. And they might even be okay. You, dear reader (both real and imaginary), get to be the judge of that. You get to determine whether I made the grade or not.

One more thing about DailyPrompt prompts. Not everybody treats them as a challenge to create a full story or complete poem. (Okay, maybe complete poems.) Which is great because the prompts are just there to get people to write something. Nearly anything. But I like to write complete stories because that is who I am. If I am going to respond to a prompt, I am going to finish the story. Even if it is a bit longer than some people are willing to read. After all, I figure that if I am going to make a story public, I may as well make it complete.

I hope you enjoy my Halloween stories. They are not truly Halloween pieces except the last one. The one that will go live on Halloween. But they are creepy enough or scary enough (not too scary though) or at least different enough to be included in a Halloween collection. I hope you enjoy them.

I am not sure what I am going to write today, but it will be something new. Although Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun. Hmm.

I am not sure what I am doing with a blog. I mean, I do not say much of interest to anybody, right? I do wonder if I still have any readers out there. I wonder if I said, “Hello,” into the internet, if it would just echo echo echo like it does in the Pink Floyd song. (I know. That thought is definitely not original. I might have even used it in the last year.) I do hope I still have readers out there, but I do not check statistics or anything like that, so I do not really know. (I do get an email about something or other that gives me a little idea of engagement. It at least seems like a few people touch down at my site. So I guess I have at least a few people who read a few words.)

At any rate.

This is not a woe is me blog post, by the way. If it was, I would beg readers to go to my Amazon page and check out my books. I do have quite a few out there. Yes, I know. They are self-published. And everybody knows that self-published authors are just authors that cannot hack it in the real publishing world. Actually, I think that self-published authors come in several ilks. I happen to be in the ilk of wannabes. I wannabe a writer, but I am not sure that I am good enough to be a professional writer. Oh sure. People have told me that I write well, but that has translated into nearly 30 books and maybe that many sales. Okay. Maybe not quite 30 sales. Which is not a complaint. It is a lament that I do not know how to market myself or my wares. Then again, I have this blog, which surely sells who I am. (Did you catch the sarcasm? Even without a sarcastic font?)

At any rate.

I am still not sure what I am going to write today. I have those couple thoughts above, but they are disjointed. Hello. Alas. Those seem to be the themes of the two paragraphs. Maybe this paragraph could be summed up with the word: Huh. Or perhaps Huh? I do not really know. After all, I am just trying to get some words out there that would work for a blog post that I have not just reused, recycled, or regurgitated. That is the danger of writing a silly blog for all these years. I might actually just be recycling ideas. I might just be saying things that I have already said before. However, I do not think that I just regurgitate. After all, I am not a student who crams for an exam and then regurgitates the info. I do not just give a data dump on a blog post. No. I am thoughtful about what I write. Usually. (What was I writing about today?)

Okay. So the last paragraph really can be summed up with the word: Huh? But that is okay. It did bring me back to the beginning. There really is nothing new under the sun. So if I really did write something new and unique, that would be pretty amazing. Even if the thoughts here were not.

Have you ever had a ton of ideas and not enough time to write them all? Yeah. Me neither. But when it does happen, it is both frustrating and amazing.

Writing is a creative endeavor. Or it is supposed to be. And as such there is a little inspiration and a lot of hard work. Or at least that is the way it is supposed to be. I love it when I have lots of inspiration and when I am working hard. And it seems that they tend to go hand in hand. Which is good. It means that the more I work, the more I am inspired. But having too much inspiration can be frustrating.

Having lots of inspiration is amazing, for sure. And what I mean by lots of inspiration is that I have lots of ideas. They are coming full speed ahead with nary a breath between them. Not that I have tons of blog post ideas, but sometimes. These days, I am usually having book ideas. Which is more fun anyway. (Sorry faithful readers. Both real and imaginary.) There is a problem with having too many ideas though. There is just not enough time to write them all. And even if there is enough time to write them all, there is not enough time to finish them all.

I am not gonna brag, but I have been in a zone where I have had lots of book ideas. (Did you like the tie in to a post I wrote a few weeks ago?) These book ideas do not come and go like they used to. They are stuck in my brain. And they are in a journal so they do not escape back to the idea ether. (An idea I shared a long time ago.) It is great and it is frustrating.

The thing with having so many ideas is, like I already said, tough to manage because there is only so much time in the day. And even if I was more than a part-time writer, there would still not be enough time in the day to write all the ideas that have been coming into my mind lately. Oh, they are not all new ideas, to be sure. But the ideas for new stories and fleshing out current stories and even how to edit older stories that I have not released yet come fast and furious. And I cannot deal with them all except to put some of them on back burners and hope that someday I will get the time to deal with them.

It is both frustrating and satisfying. Satisfying because I realize that the more I work, the more work I create for myself. And the more work I create for myself, the more inspired I become to work more and get more work. Frustrating because I keep giving myself more work that I cannot possibly do. Ah well. It is a nice predicament to be in. Too many ideas to get out in book form.

I love the challenge of being a part-time writer. To be sure, I am loving it less as time goes by. But I like the challenge of writing in small chunks in order to get something productive done. I used to barely be able to get a blog post done in a week. Okay. I got it done in a day, when I was only writing once a week. Still, it was a challenge to even write that much. But then, I started having more ideas and I needed to write more. So I started writing six days a week. (Gotta take that Sabbath.) And now, I wonder if I could get up earlier to write more. Or if I should write in the evenings when I am nearly spent. I know the answer, really. I just need to write until my fingers fall off every morning.

But seriously. I am just excited that I have so many ideas for books. I am less excited that I have not gotten out my next book and have neglected its polishing and final preparations. But I am glad that I have more ideas than I can handle right now.

I know I said in the beginning that having too many ideas and not enough time does not happen to me, but I am so glad that it does. Even though it is both amazing and frustrating.

I posted a picture on my last blog post that was a little pun, so I thought I would use it for a new blog post about writer’s block. (Spoiler alert: Writer’s block is not a thing.)

If you missed my post from last week, you did not miss much. I just rambled on about not much. Still, I got my blog post out and that is always a good thing. At least from my perspective. I just gotta put something out there. Even if it is neither coherent nor relevant. But one of the fun things I did last week was post a picture with my blog post that was a pun. And even if you missed last week’s post (you can click on the link at the bottom of the page to go back), you will still get to see the pun this week. Oh joy!

I am sure that when you read the title of this post and saw the picture, you groaned. I know because I heard it. Really. I laughed when I saw the picture and thought that maybe I should just save it for this particular blog post, which I knew that I was going to write one day. (As it turned out, I wrote it on the day that I got the picture for my last post). Who could stop from laughing. I mean, c’mon. Kids’ blocks with letters on them! Writer’s block? Get it?

Okay. I know you got it. And I am sure you groaned again when I explained it. But that is not the point.

The point is that writer’s blocks (as in the picture) is funny.

Okay. Maybe not completely funny. Just as I am sure writers do not think that writer’s block is funny. But it is. After all, it is an imaginary affliction. I heard you groan again. At least if you are a writer.

The thing about writer’s block is that it is merely an excuse for not writing.

“I can’t write today. I have writer’s block.”
“No words are coming. I have a terrible case of writer’s block.”
“That MediocreMan guy thinks there’s no writer’s block! I’ll show him. I have a terrible case of it now.”

Well, if you are a writer and you have ever used writer’s block as an excuse, get over it. Oops. I was going to say that I have a cure for it. Really. I was going to say that if you are a writer with writer’s block, you should just get over it. Oops. I wrote it again.

So how do you cure writer’s block? Just get over it. And how do you just get over it? (Here is the cure.) Just write. That is right. The cure for writer’s block is to just write. Just write anything. Or just write nothing. Blah. Blah. Blah. Nothing. Anything. Whatever comes to mind. Just write and write and write. Then, write some more. That is the only cure for writer’s block. Writing.

I know that it sounds simple. I know that it sounds like I am making fun of you for having writer’s block. But I am not. And the reason I am not is because I had a terrible case of writer’s block for many years. At least a decade. You see, I used to only write when I was inspired. And that amounted to having writer’s block the rest of the time. So while I said I wanted to write, I was not writing.

And then along came a friend and fellow writer who said that I just needed to write. Such a simple solution. Then, he told me to just ship it. Write it and ship it. What a simple solution. And that solution has worked for twice as long as the affliction. In other words, the cure can be permanent. If you want it to be.

Well, if you did not like my punny picture, you probably did not like my cure for your ailment. But that is okay. It is okay because even if you still believe that writer’s block is a thing, you can cure it forever by just writing. You do not need to take my word for it. Try it and see. When you write all the time, you will not get writer’s block anymore. You will find that you can write with writer’s block. Then, you will join me and spread the word that writer’s block is not a thing.

I actually do not know what I am going to write today, but I am going to write.

I do not have writer’s block. I do not believe it is a thing. Really, I have even posted a few posts about it not being a thing. Or at least one. I think. Regardless of how many posts I have written (or not written) about it, I just do not think that writer’s block is a thing. So even though I do not know exactly what I am going to write this morning, I do NOT have writer’s block.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way…

I do this every once in a while. I do not know what I am going to write, so I just write what comes into my mind. Not quite a stream of consciousness thing. I just write. And something coherent always comes out. Okay. Not always. But usually. Or if not completely coherent, at least something that I can post on a blog that nobody reads. (Sorry readers. Both real and imaginary.)

Speaking of hyperbole. (Which by the way, is pronounced hy-per-bo-lee. I used to read it as hyper-bowl. I even thought that when people were saying hy-per-bo-lee, they were saying a completely different word. And this was just a few years ago. Okay. Maybe more than a few, but I was definitely an adult at the time I finally figured out what the word was and how to spell it. I-T. Sorry. You get a dumb dad joke thrown in. Which by the way is a bit insulting. I mean, is it that the dad is dumb because that is where the modifier is or is it the joke that is dumb? I suppose that in my case it could be either or both. Hmm.)

At any rate.

Speaking of hyperbole. I am not one who really likes it. Saying all or none or never or always just does not fit in with either the way I speak or the way I write. I do not like to exaggerate. At least not to that extent. I would rather give a little bit of embellishment to a story to make it funnier or more embarrassing for me. Or just a better story. But using hyperbole is just not my style. I mean, c’mon. I am the guy who likes to ask, “Always?” or “Never?” or “Everybody?” or “Nobody?” or… Well, you get the picture. I always hate that people use such hyperbole when they talk. (“Always?”)

Well, I have written nearly five-hundred words about nothing so far. I may as well make it the whole way. (Whatever that means.)

Speaking of writer’s block (which is not a thing). I wrote a story for DailyPrompt that was written to a prompt that I submitted. That was fun. It was about, wait for it. It was about a conversation at a writers’ group. I had so much fun writing it because the writers’ group talked about writer’s block. Which is not a real thing! It was great fun. I used a bunch of first names of authors that I have either read or know about. It was great fun. (Oops. I already said that. Ah well.) I will probably post that story on this blog one day. In fact, I have two stories that I am pretty sure I am going to post. One is a fun (although a bit gruesome) Halloween story. And the other is the one about the writers’ groups talking about writer’s block (which I just said). And I will probably post some others along the way. After all, I can post about pretty much anything when it comes right down to it. I mean really. I just blog about life.

Well, I think that is about it. I started out writing about who knows what and ended up having an almost cohesive little blog post of over 650 words. (You can count, if you like.) It is funny though. It seems like whenever I do not know what to write or when I just write whatever comes to my mind, I seem to write about writer’s block. If I did not mention it before, it is not a thing. And I know that because I had no idea what I was going to write when I started writing and here I am finishing a blog post about not that much.

I guess it can be fun writing when I have no idea what I am going to write. (Did I mention that writer’s block is not a thing?)