Mortified


We had a school boy doing work experience with us for the past fortnight, and getting on everybody’s nerves. He was sixteen, and had more self-confidence than I did at that age- or have now, come to think of it. Before he’d been with us for a day, he thought he knew it all. If we asked him to do anything, we had to justify ourselves.
To be strictly fair to him, nobody sat down and thought about what he was going to do whilst he was with us. When you go on work experience, you’re only supposed to get a flavour of what going out to work is like. Instead of which, we gave him all the horrible jobs which nobody had done from year to the next, such as shredding paper.
On his first day, my boss asked if he could shadow me. I must have looked horror stricken, because she then handed him over to somebody else. After that, whenever we worked side by side, I felt mortified.
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I bought Ron Carlson Writes A Story. I’d heard it was good, and so far it has been. He takes you through the stages he went underwent as he wrote a short story, The Governor’s Ball. He began with a memory, didn’t seem to plot at all or write notes about the characters. He simply ‘discovered’ what he needed to know (or made it up as he went along), each line he wrote suggesting further ideas. I’m intrigued about this way of writing.
I bought the book because I thought that it could break my block. I could have ordered it from the public library, but I need to read it now, or so I told myself. A pattern I fall into again and again whenever I’m blocked. A lot of the time, I don’t even read the creative writing title; and a lot of the time, too, it doesn’t break the block. You feel hopeful after you’ve parted with your money, perhaps even as you read. The hope makes you feel good, and feeling good is a prerequisite for finding inspiration. But most creative writing books, even the best ones, really only come into their own after you’ve got your idea.
There is another book which I do recommend if you’re blocked, though: How To Get Ideas by Jack Foster. It’s not written specifically for writers- I found it in my library’s Business section- but anybody, anybody at all might find it useful.

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