In a recent Article on Glimmer Train, Writer Roxana Robinson said:

“All the fiction I write arises from the same sort of impulse: it’s a feeling of discomfort, a kind of unspecified anxiety, a need to uncover something that troubles and disturbs me. I write toward that feeling. I try to explain it to myself in order to disarm it, to rob it of its potency. I don’t know how this explanation will happen. I don’t know how the disarmament will take place, or what else will happen in the process.”

Most people are not strangers with this uncertain Discomfort. Yet, as writers we have the opportunity to make it work for us, to push us deeper into our craft. Robinson goes on to explain what this looks like:

“My task then is to write a narrative that will make that moment become as powerful for you, the reader, as it was for me, the writer. I must describe a landscape, introduce characters, and create the action as it unfolds, but all of this is directed toward the creation of that last vivid moment—difficult and breathtaking—that I found so compelling.” (Click here for the full article)

How have you used such discomfort in your writing? If you haven’t, where might you start?

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