An Author's Frustrations

So, here’s the thing: I love fiction.  I like books, and movies, TV shows, and even musicals.  I like fantasy, adventure, sci-fi, mystery, and most anything you can think of.  I even like poetry.  I like funny, dramatic, cheesy (to an extent), tragic, meaningful, and most anything else.  Well, I’m not big on horror, but that’s about the only one I don’t care for.  I like deep type war movies, and shallow-yet-awesome shoot-‘em-up movies (the key with those—as with superhero movies—is that they’ve gotta have good fight scenes).  I like Shakespearian comedies (I haven’t watched many tragedies yet, I’m waiting for the ‘opportune moment’) and I like kids’ movies (if they’re well done, I mean Tangled, great movie).  And, I watch everything from The Vampire Diaries to Doctor Who.  As far as poetry goes, I prefer things that make me think, but that’s most anything.  Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken is amazing, so are The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Lord Tennyson and I Died for Beauty, by Emily Dickinson.  I also especially love I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou and War is Kind by Stephen Crane.

Here’s where it gets interesting, I also like to write.  I get some good ideas, scenes or plots, maybe even a character or a place.  But, I can never seem to get it all together.  Maybe I’ve got the plot all worked out, down to the smallest detail, but I can’t make the writing sound good.  Or maybe, I can write just fine, but my story’s going nowhere.  Or say I’ve got both, the writing’s going great, I know the plot, but my characters just seem wrong, or fake, or shallow.  Even when there’s nothing wrong and I’ve got it all together, I just lose my drive; I can’t seem to focus, or anything I write sounds like drivel, or no matter what I do, my mind goes blank.

Sure, I can write short stories, or poems, but I can’t seem to make much headway on anything longer.  That is, I have one book finished, that a friend and I are writing together, but writing by myself, it never works out.

Characters.  It’s really hard with characters.  I’m sure I’m not the only one, but the only characters I can write are, in some way, based off myself.  That’s all well and good, except for I always seem to have the same protagonist, I mean, there’s some differences, but the basic nature doesn’t change.  The real problem with this is that, while specifics change, I always end up with the same basic scenarios.  That’s part of the reason I get so easily bored or distracted with my work.  ‘Cause, when you get down to it, it’s really the same thing every time.  It’s kind of like when you play with picture effects on Photoshop; you change the filter, or the color scheme, or whatever, but—when you get down to it—it’s still the same picture underneath.