Writing the Thing That Does Not Want to Be Written

Every writer knows the struggle: you sit down with the intention of writing, and nothing happens. You might put down a few words, then end up browsing the internet for a few hours. If you’re anything like me, you’ll wander off, get distracted by a cat, and completely forget that you wanted to be writing in the first place.

Some stories arrive easily. They come with a name, a rhythm, a beginning that practically writes itself. Most of the time, however, I find myself circling a story I don’t quite understand yet, one that resists being pinned down. I turn on the computer and try to lure it closer, but it keeps just out of reach, shadowed and shifting. I know it’s there. I know it wants to exist. But for reasons I haven’t figured out, it just doesn’t want to be written yet.

Have you ever felt like the words are there, but just out of reach?

I usually have an idea in mind, or at least a few words that could be developed into a story. Years ago, while trying to come up with a concept for a children’s book, I imagined a small chicken wearing armor and fighting a fearsome dragon. The idea of an unlikely creature taking on a much bigger or stronger adversary isn’t exactly new, but there was something about this particular chicken that stuck with me. Still, I couldn’t figure out the details of the story, or how to write it in such a way that would do the character justice.

That’s the thing about ideas: they arrive with a spark, but no roadmap. They haunt you quietly, showing up at odd times like when you’re in the shower or folding the laundry. And yet, when you finally sit down to work on them, they retreat. They get stubborn. They want to be chased. After a while, you might question whether your idea was any good at all.

Some stories resist being written because they are still being formed.

The great Toni Morrison once said, “I tell my students there is such a thing as ‘writer’s block,’ and they should respect it. It’s blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven’t got it right now.” Wise words.

Good ideas often need time to marinate in order to reach their full potential. They need time to ripen in the background while we live our lives, learn new things, and become the kind of person who can write them. Some days, writing is words on a page. Other days, it’s waiting. It’s listening and trusting that the idea you love will find its way through, in its own time.

In 2016, while scrambling to develop a screenplay concept for what would become my Master’s thesis project, I found myself stuck. Under pressure and out of ideas, my mind returned to that one persistent image: the brave little chicken. In 2020, I wrote my first full draft of the screenplay.

Had I rushed to write the story (now titled Luella) back when the idea first came to me, it likely would have turned out quite differently. In the years that the chicken lay dormant, I read widely, learned more about storytelling, and developed a fondness for the work of Kenneth Grahame, whose reluctant dragon undoubtedly influenced my writing.

Some stories need time to become themselves, and some writers need time to grow into the stories they were always meant to tell. If you’re wrestling with something unwritable right now, an idea that won’t unfold, or a story that won’t settle, take heart. It might not be ready yet. You might not be ready yet. That’s not failure. That’s fermentation.

So keep the notebook open. Give the chicken time to sharpen her sword. The words will come.