Tuesday, March 6, 2012

STUMPED

I’m stumped. Here I sit pondering which words of wisdom I should expound upon in today’s blog, only I can’t think of any. All traces of wisdom I may have possessed at one time or another have rolled out of my left ear, scrammed outta the conga line, and headed off to the beach.

NOOO!!! It’s already paragraph #2, and still I’m stumped! Should I write about strange-but-true factoids, like the factoid that says manhole covers are round because if they were rectangular or square, they would fall into the manhole? Nah. Then I’d have to think up a lot more strange factoids. Besides, does anybody care about manhole covers? Not really.

Should I write about adding humor to nonfiction books for kids? Nah. I do love the idea of adding humor to my books; everything is so much more memorable when it’s funny. Except that today, I can’t think of a single funny thing to say in a book.

If I make a lot of paragraphs, there will be more spaces in this blog and it will take up a lot of room.

There. I just made another paragraph.

Look, I did it again!! :-) Now I’ll probably get kicked out of the blog! :-( All my faithful readers will accuse me of snorting something strange and my reputation will be toast. Maybe I can just use a lot of exclamation points and take up even more space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or I could just find a humongous piece of art and plug it in because it could swallow up entire paragraphs worth of space, like this:



OR IF IT'S NOT TOO OBVIOUS, I CAN JUST USE REALLY BIG TYPE.

Oh. I guess that was a little too obvious.

Maybe I can say that quotes are a good thing to use in your books. That would actually be true, and then I could go look up a bunch of cool quotes. That could take up a whole lot of space too. OK, why not. Here’s a quote from Will Rogers (1879-1935):

“It’s awful hard to get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it.”

(I added the dates after Will Rogers' name to take up space.)

It’s kinda like coming up with an idea for a new book. It’s kinda like brain freeze. Or writer’s block.

Still stumped in Virginia; over and out.



10 comments:

Unknown said...

Fun! Sorta like Seinfeld About nothing. Yet, who hasn't been there?

Peggy T said...

Is it contagious? 'Cause I'm stumped too.
Stumped in New York.

Unknown said...

You set me to giggling this morning, which is important since I'm writing some heavy duty fiction just now(I'm doing our income taxes!).

Sue Macy said...

I love this post. But when you were deciding which random photo to include, why did you choose the fish? See, just deciding on a random photo would have taken me at least half an hour. You clearly have taken being stumped to an impressively productive level.

Annalisa said...

Years of waiting. Months of research. Weeks of thinking. And only a split second to get the strength and determination to just draw something, anything...then, days of drawing and editing and drawing and more drawing. In hind sight, it was that frustration in being "stumped" that kicked me to the edge and just leap into that vast world of something/nothingness that lead me to the right path.

Kinda like sliding uphill until you see the top and have to decide to dig in your heels or let it all go. Its a scary moment, but like my teacher always said "something is better than nothing"

LOL, whenever I thought about writing deadlines I made the word count my scorecard...like 50 words...if I didn't put anything down that's 0/50, blah! So with 50 words on the page 50/50, but knowing there is still bonus points for creativity and to make those 50 words perfect (hehehe, always want those bonus points to make that bell curve sway in my favor)...anyway, just trying to be helpful to get ya'll unstumped.

Rosalyn Schanzer said...

Sue, I picked that fish because it looked the most like a self-portrait of me as a stumped person. From personal experience, I have to admit that taking pictures is a whole lot easier than thinking up new blog ideas; all you have to do is snap away and voila! And Jim, cross my heart and hope to die, I promise not to tell the IRS that taxes = fiction.

Susan E. Goodman said...

Well, now I'm stumped! Ever since a friend of mine wrote a post called "I got nothin'," I've been saving the idea in my back pocket for safety. MAY I REMIND YOU THAT MY POST IS COMING UP ON MONDAY?!? The nice thing is that, like always, it's interesting to see how differently we all approach the same topic. Nice job, R!

Rosalyn Schanzer said...

Susan! LOL - I want to see your take on this!!!

Gretchen Woelfle said...

LOL about how this post has generated more comments than any in living memory! Oh, the nerve you have struck!

Anna M. Lewis said...

Great Post!
Exactly how I've started my posts for the past 4 years.