Stuck in Dreamland
Did you ever have one of those days that, just before you got out of bed, you were having a really lucid dream that pulled some strong emotional cords, and throughout the rest of the day you’re stuck in the dreamland, remembering the emotions and feel of that world? I’m having one of those today. I’m actually trying to convey the dream into a story on one of my other blogs (the conscious particles literary blog, where I store short stories) but, since I’m not that great of a writer, I have a hard time conveying the feeling of the setting, plus I’m supposed to be working right now too, heh.
It’s times like these that I wish I had the time/money to go back to school to learn how to write. I’m good at coming up with a decent plot, I can move a story forward, but the story is always dry. I’m no good at description. I think part of the problem is, even when I read a book, I tend to just glaze over the details of the setting. I don’t care about the color of the drapes in the room adjacent to the one the character is standing, let’s get on with it! Then, of course, when the author references some detail that I paid no attention to I’m temporarily lost, and in the end I miss out on some of the richness the story offered. The result, however, is that in my own writing I just want to blow past the adjectives and adverbs and move the plot along at a blinding pace. My style tends to be “this happens, then this happens, then this happens, the end”. I have no richness, no content, no character depth, and I don’t know how to do those things.
In today’s dreamland, nuance and subtlety is the key to the process of the character discovering what happened. It’s a gradual realization that is completely centered on things like the how faded certain fabric covered cubicle walls are. Without the ability to describe the original look of the walls adequately, how can I ever bring the reader along the path of noticing the very subtle change in the look? Then, of course, there is the love interest. The main character makes a decision that has a huge impact on the rest of his life, all over a girl that dies. Without the vocabulary or style, how do I make the reader feel the emotions of his decision, his anguish at her loss (and possible un-loss…*that’s called foreshadowing ha!* and no she’s no a zombie). I can see the place in my mind, I can see the small details, like the dust that hangs in the late afternoon sunlight that is meandering through the 12th floor windows. See that line? That’s the best I can do. Real writers could describe the sunlight as a flavor and make you totally understand. *sigh*
It makes me wish I had a ghost writer..I could be a famous author, if only I didn’t have to write the stories. 
