Writing is Easy/Hard
One day while I was having coffee with a friend of mine, he offhandedly mentioned that he wished there were more good gay romcoms. That there was no reason why the queer audience should have Hallmark-Movie-level romantic stories all over the place, but apparently no one knows how to make them. Over the course of about five minutes, I laid down the bones of a meet-cute cosy rom-com about a newly-divorced woman, the house she bought as a fixer-upper project, and the houseflip butch neighbor. It's not entirely just a gender-flipped story, but let's just say it shares a lot of the same bones. Major and minor characters, concept, setup, complication, second-act twist, third-act conflct, denouement, scratch possible cast list... like, the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. It was fun for me, because I do this ALL THE TIME. There's very few moments in time when I am not thinking up concepts for stories, pitches, settings, etc.
When he asked me about it, I told him: having ideas isn't the problem; it's the followthrough that's the problem. As someone who does actually do some writing (none of it professionally, some of it as fanfiction) the experience of writing something is fantastic. The flow of words from brain to page/screen is extremely satisfying. It's maybe one of the most relaxing, enjoyable things I've ever done, which follows closely the process of having and laying out ideas.
The experience of sitting at a keyboard and making words appear is also, to me, one of the most excruciating, impossible, unpleasant experiences I have ever had in my entire life, and I have had significant orthodontal surgery. The physical removal of my testicles was more pleasant than sitting down, opening up a window, and banging out three sentences.
Making that jump from the idea to the flow requires a step, the start, which is maybe the worst part of being a writer, at least to me.
I want to write more, but the words aren't coming. Ironic, right?
