Why is descriptive writing so hard?

Writing prompt: Write a description of this picture and share it in the comments below.

Lately, I’ve been working my way through the manuscript I started for my creative master’s thesis in an attempt to finally finish the novel already and get it published. As I am working my way through the novel this time, I am struck dumb by the lack of description in these first 90+ pages that are supposedly polished to the point of being publishable.

Two questions come to mind: first, how did this happen? And second, what the heck am I going to do about it?

I have gotten far enough away from the actual writing of this project that I feel as though I am seeing it through my “reader’s lens,” and I am really not happy with what I am reading. Sure, my dialog is awesome (I ROCK at dialog!), but there’s not a whole lot going on around that dialog.

Describe something in ten different ways

Sometimes, I think my descriptive writing looks a little like this. | Child Art Aged 2.5 Smiley Face with Writing Underneath (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Chuck Wendig/TerribleMinds writing exercise for today is to describe one thing in ten different ways. I decided I needed to attempt this one since description is NOT my strong suit. I chose to describe description:

Writing description, for me, 1) is like pulling teeth. Yes, cliché is often my go-to strategy. Don’t most of our brains take the path of least resistance most of the time? It’s 2) like a traffic jam when I’m already late (HA!)

Okay, now that I’m done dating myself, let’s proceed, shall we?

Writing description 3) is hard for me. Once in a great while, 4) it pours out of me as though someone has turned on the rusty description faucet in my head, full-blast, if only for a few minutes.