Snapshots of a Modest Life

Writer's Block

I've been writing a short story for my Fiction Technique class. The problem is I made it personal. Very personal if you ask me. Maybe even too personal. It's a fictionalized version of my grandmother's funeral several years ago--I don't even remember how many--and I'm trying to get it farther away from home than it is. The writing text book said not to make a character too much like yourself, well I ignored that guideline (because rules to writing are really more like guidelines), and now I'm finding myself in a huge pickle, because I don't want to write anymore on these lines. Do I dare cut out one of my brothers from the story, because that just wouldn't be nice.

So this is what I've been wrestling with, while trying to find inspiration on the Grey's Anatomy writer's blog. It's also not funny...I wanted it to be funny. And I think I finally have a theme for my story, but I don't know how to communicate it yet. Do stories have to have a theme? A moral? I'm trying to answer all of these questions and just get it over with, but it's not really working. Maybe I'll roll around on the floor and moan about how horrible my life is and it'll come to me. That actually sounds like a good alternative at the moment.

Or guitar...I could play guitar.