Why is it easy to write what's happening but hard to write fiction? in Thoughts, wishes and things

Every time I try to write something fictional, it’s hard to think of what to write, and it comes out sounding terrible. It’s all weird and stilted. But when I write a random update on what I’m doing, it’s easier to write. I’m not sure if it comes out OK or not to anyone else, but at least the words flow easily to me like they’re doing now.

How do fiction writers do it? I mean, how do they actually think of what to write? It would seriously take me an eon, because even after thinking of a plot, you have the problem of how much or how little to describe something. How do they know what to write and how to write it? It’s such a mystery!

You would think it would be easy to write fiction, since the writer can just make it up as he or she goes along. But actually, that’s the hard part. There are a million and one things the writer could write about, so how do they know what to limit it down to? If I’m writing about something that’s actually happening or has happened, it’s non-fiction so at least I know what the topic is supposed to be, so I can just go ahead and write about it. But when anything could literally happen, how do fiction writers know what to do? I mean, what do you do when anything could happen? How do you know that the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t have to put in an appearance in your book? That might be a bit of an extreme example (unless the book involved monsters of course), but how do writers know what’s a good idea to put in a book and what’s not? In a world where everything is possible??

By contrast, writing about something that actually happened is easier because then you don’t have to worry about what things should or should not be included, since you can just write about what happened. The topic is so much more simple, suddenly.

Eventually I just decided I was not cut out for writing fiction. I just can’t make it come out right, no matter how much I try. On the other hand, I think it is partly also a matter of practice. All of us tend to have more daily practice writing factual stuff, mainly because we might be writing emails or other things where we (as part of work or whatever) have to write in a factual manner. So maybe we all just have more practice writing that sort of thing. Except for people in a creative writing class or who are actively trying to practice their fiction writing, it doesn’t occur naturally in the course of a normal day to write fiction.

So, I’d say to answer the original question, that in my case it’s a distinct lack of talent. But in many cases where the person might be talented it’s also a lack of normal practice to write fiction. People have to actively seek out the opportunity to write fiction, since in the normal course of most people’s days this does not happen. So I guess there is room for everyone to do better in writing fiction if we practice. I admit freely though that I don’t want to put in the time to practice it! I just don’t enjoy writing fiction much. I suppose it’s circular: I’m bad at it, so I don’t enjoy practicing it, so I don’t practice, so I don’t improve. And around and around we go! Still, it’s not like I’m trying to be an author, and life is too short to spend on hobbies that I don’t truly like or want to do.

So I will stick with my diary but it will just have to be snippets of what I’m doing and not any exciting fiction or anything like that.