Writing Prompt Boot Camp, Day 1

For the next two weeks, I am going to present a series of writing prompts. Maybe they'll give you a better idea of who I am and why I write. Maybe I'll learn those things for myself!

Let's begin, shall we?

Day One: Breaking Up With Writer's Block

Dear Writer’s Block,

It’s not you, it’s me.

See, I don’t believe you really exist. Lots of people talk about how to beat you, how to cope with you, and even how to make you work for them. But I’ve read a bunch of that stuff over the years, and all the advice and tips and tricks seem to boil down to one thing: just start writing.

I make my living as a writer. Sure, I’m a technical writer, and that means I write non-fiction pieces about various technical subjects. But for all that time I almost never considered myself a real writer. That thought nagged at me for a long time, building in intensity as the years went by. Then the pandemic hit in 2020 and that thought started screaming at me. I wondered why it chose then to turn up the volume.

I have spent the majority of my creative life as an actor. I have performed on one stage or another since the age of 12; I made my professional debut six years later. Even though my lifetime earnings from performance can barely crack the five-figure range, I always approached performing as a professional. I earned an MFA in order to sharpen my skills and hopefully find a way into the profession. My skills got sharper, but the way into the profession eluded me.

(And yes, I could write thousands of words on the irony of discovering tech writing during my MFA program, but let’s sum it up like this: I went to school to get into a certain profession and wound up getting into an altogether different one.)

I chose to view my tech writing as a way to support my acting habit. I performed in dozens of community theater and small professional theater productions. I joined a musical improv comedy group and spent three years performing all around the Washington, DC, area. My creative life was fulfilling, and my memories of those years are full of wonders and delights.

Then came COVID-19, and that nagging thought (“you’re not a real writer”) got louder. At first, I didn’t understand why. When the performances of my murder mystery dinner theater group were cancelled, I was left without a creative outlet. For the first time, I was cut off from my own creative life! I think part of me, the creative part, got really scared. And what do scared people do? They scream!

So, back to you, WB.

With the lockdown in full effect, I had to figure out a way to resuscitate my creative life. I did some staged readings over ZOOM, but they didn’t quite satisfy me. One Friday evening, I was looking over a script for an old “Star Trek” episode my friends and I were going to perform (mostly for ourselves, we never did capture much of an audience). As I went through my process of analyzing the text, a new thought hit me like a stomach punch: Why are you telling someone else’s story?

I had never looked at my creative life, my acting, like that before. I have spent over 45 years telling other people’s stories. What about my stories? Did I have any stories to tell? Would anyone listen to them?

And in the very next moment, the solution presented itself: just start writing.

For the past four years, that’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t have much “to show” for my efforts: a 100-word holiday horror themed “drabble” published in a Canadian anthology. I do aspire to get more things published, and I have been working toward the goal of getting at least one story into an anthology by the end of this year.

But, for right now, I am telling my own stories. And I am loving every word of it!

You see, WB, that’s what I ultimately learned about you: you don’t really exist. Not in the way all of those books and workshops say you do. You only exist if I give you recognition and power. And I refuse to do that from now on.

So, goodbye, WB. I wish I could say it’s been fun, but… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Regards,

Tom Witherspoon

Milwaukie, OR