Go Ahead — Write This Story: Writer's block

[mount_oregano]

Writer's block: It happens, it hurts, but you can cure it and resume writing. Try free writing — write anything, just write. Or write about the story rather than adding text to it. If you never outline, try it; if you always outline, abandon it. Take a walk. Read something weird. Change your writing tools. Brainstorm at least five ideas about what can happen next. Work on some other writing. Or maybe you have finished the story and don't realize it yet. If you need an idea for a story, here are a few:

• This is a satirical novelette in which a secret corps of patriots raids George Washington's tomb for DNA to create a new American hero.

• This is a story about an all-night convenience store clerk who begins to suspect that certain of his customers are supernatural beings preparing for some sort of organized activity.

• This is short-short story about a man who believes the Mayan prophecy that the world will end in a flood on December 23, 2012; he gets a cabin in the Canadian Rockies and sits on his front stoop as the clock strikes midnight.

— Sue Burke

Comments

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

BTW, in other news, I included a mention of Amadis of Gaul in my most recent chapter of Arizona, about a would-be hidalgo who wants to be a would-be conquistador with Coronado, after remembering reading your translation online. It was a case of story idea bolstered by research: I wanted to include it in a list of something my character had devoured in his love of romances and epics, and then it turns out that it actually was one of the most popular books in Spain (and New Spain) in the early 16th century. :) (Though you probably already knew that!)

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

In fact, we know the conquistadores read the book because they refer to it in their accounts. For example, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier who accompanied Cortés, upon seeing the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, wrote: "We were struck with admiration, and we said it seemed like the things and enchantment that are told of in the book about Amadis."

And then there's California:
http://amadisofgaul.blogspot.com/2009/07/california-according-to-garci-rodriguez.html