Write it again.
Print it out;
rip it up; throw it
out;
delete the file. Write it
again.
Write it in the
past. Write it
in the future. Write it from
every point of view you can imagine, especially
first-person omnicient. Change your
characters into
monkeys and write it one more time. Now
change the ending. Make your bad guys
more compassionate and your good guys
curse more. Pick a
character to be a
closet pothead--drop
one teeny hint of said characteristic and
leave it alone. No, now
delete it. Write it again.
Write for
hours about the
color blue of the
bathroom paint where the
girl throws up. Try to make it
vital to the
ending. Put a
suitcase in
every chapter. Spend
three weeks daydreaming about how to
rationally explain killer
trees that
scream and eat people; when you finally get it worked out,
discard the idea in favor of an
invading race of mages from the
dark side of the moon. Let the
good guys win for a
draft. Scribble an
entire planet's economic flow on a
dinner napkin. Invent a
new species every few days until
nothing bothers you. Then throw it out, and--you
guessed it--write it again.
Extend this
dialog for a
few years and, if you were
ever curious, you'd know what it was like to
write stories. Or you could just
FUQing
forget it and go
get some more coffee.