It's way past 11pm on Wednesday night and I'm still yet to write a short story for the crit group, due by Friday. What follows is a brief brain-dump that is primarily for my benefit and may or may not be useful for writerly types to ponder...

Over the past few days I've sifted through the ideas file and notebook and found 5 juicy ideas, all of which require either a decent amount of research or serious plot-doctoring. That said, they're all very promising, but I find it highly unlikely that any one of them could be fixed and written before Friday.

For two of the ideas, I have made copious notes in an attempt to reach critical mass, which is that point where I have enough detail to dive into the story. At this stage I don't think these two are quite ready.

I very rarely sit down at the computer and spontaneously write a story with no prior thought. I like to brainstorm, sort through ideas, and then come up with tonnes of questions that should be addressed in a potential story. This serves several purposes. I can:
* quickly discard unworkable (and often lame) ideas.
* identify areas that will require further research before the story can proceed.
* generate plot based on the questions raised by the idea.
I'm sure there are others that I'm too tired to think of right now.

The problem I'm finding now is that I need to learn how to sit down and just write a story with no (or minimal) preparation. Almost every time I try this, I either stare blankly at the screen for half an hour, or I write a few paragraphs and then find I have questions popping up (this is the more frequent scenario); the kind of questions which are useful in determining which path to head down, or which trail to blaze.

For most of the stories I've written, the process takes about a week to get a completed first draft. The only occasion that I can recall when I wrote something from scratch with no preparation was when I had a race with a friend to write a story as quickly as possible. The end result was rather rough and full of plot-holes, but reasonably amusing. That took 2 hours from start to finish.

Obviously I've got to stop asking so many questions and just write. I think part of the problem may be that I feel pressured to get the story done by Friday and I don't want to turn in crap. The end result is this paralysis where I'm too hesitant to write anything.

It seems like I'm too heavily invested in my existing ideas to just force them onto the page half-baked, so I reckon the best approach from here is to just think up something and get writing, without worrying about plot-holes or whether my output is even coherent. Heck, I may even get out my Writer's Block and write about whatever I see on the page when I open it. If nothing else, it'll be good for some laughs...