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Showing posts from March, 2013

Writer's block

Writer's block The Writer's responsibility is to his art.  He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.  He has a dream.  It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it.  He has no peace until then... William Faulkner  Having written films, articles, essays, reports, it has always, at one stage or another, plagued me when I have had writer's block.  That moment when I sit staring at the computer screen as if it is an alien standing it's ground in a duel for battle with me.  Eyeing me, daring me to drop my weapons of my imagination.  The frustration builds up and chocolate beckons, serenading the virtues of itself.  It is all too familiar, this battle, and I may have thrown my writing in all together had it not been for my editor in the late 90's when I completed some articles for Who Weekly. I remember grizzling into the phone line with him that my writing was not perfect...there was something missing...I couldn't pinpoint it...it didn't make
Stories “ Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.” Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) 'The Lamp of Life', sect. 24. There has only been one constant in my life that has soothed, tantalised, intrigued, and made me want to live and experience. It has been the power of storytelling. I become engrossed in the setting, I get weaved into a plot, I identify with the characters, begin to take sides, conjure up decisions in the conflicts and allow the ride of my life to occur with each and every story that gets told to me. It is a necessity to tell stories, culturally, socially and emotionally for it is these stories that have formed generations of people through the ages. Allowed them, in essence to dream and be able to create a better world for the next generation. As a small child I would sit with my mother, who would turn each page of a story book and draw me into a world where monsters, princesses, animal