Writing is a strange way to spend your life. If you’re a journalist, I guess the words might come out in an almost automatic response to events. If you’re a novelist, you have at least the thread of a plot to pick up on. If you’re a poet, who knows? There seems to be some mood, or impetus, or catalyst, that reaches into the well and brings up words.
I’ve been asked to do an interview about writer’s block. I don’t think I ever have had writer’s block. Something akin to despair, yes. Like right now, post-debate. But I’ve never chugged smoothly along, writing day by day, or week by week. Lord no. Sometimes I write, sometimes not. Well, I’ve cleverly managed to get my life situated so that I always have something I’ve agreed to write, aside from what might come unbidden.
It’s the unbidden that’s dependent upon the gods. If people say they have writer’s block, I think they mean they can sit and sit and nothing “comes.” This is the path of madness. Nothing is going to “come.” Yet, you can’t push too hard, either. Somehow you need to be poised between. Mostly, you have to keep the gears oiled, which is your version of waiting. You have to keep putting down words. They may often be embarrassingly awful. You may be convinced you’re getting worse as a writer. Once you were pretty good, but now your brain is aged and flabby. All your best work is behind you. You read books by young people that dazzle you. Or you read books by your peers that dazzle you. You lock down. Fear of failure.
That’s the real bugger behind what’s called writer’s (or any other kind of) block. Fear of failure. I think what it takes to keep on is a mixture of humility and hubris. I’m going to fail to measure up to what’s in my mind and heart, because words always distort, even at their best. I’m going to fail to measure up to my writer-heroes. Yet, I believe in what’s in me. Believe it’s worth saying. That I may be able to say it in a way that is pure me, and pure me is worth sharing. “Part and tag of me is a miracle.” That’s Whitman.
The small crusts of living: the few dead ants on the polished floor, the fern dropping its daily debris, the incessant panic of the TV screen, Jerry’s T-shirt over the shower curtain, drying from my bleaching out a spot, the blue sofa’s indentation, the legacy of my fondness for it. The video of the girl straightening her hair with a wondrous new heated brush. The inverted V-shape of the thrown-back covers when we each get out of bed on our own side. These are of no importance and are utterly important. To speak them is to acknowledge that I see them, that I’ve been alive to them and they’ve been alive to me.
And if I say them so that you see them in your mind, whatever they turn into in your mind, we are joined in a mutual awareness. I’m inseparable from the books I read. They meld into me, I into them.
You see what the lack of reading looks like, in our President. You see the results. You know how important words are. Writer’s block is maybe an acknowledgement of that, from the writing end. That’s okay, I’d say. Go ahead and refuse to put words down, for now. That’s a statement, too. Mouth open, speechless.
I’m all done with self-flagellation. Well, I mean to be all done with it. I’m a first child, after all, carrying the standard all first children carry. Still, there comes a time to pull in the wind-sock that checks what direction I think I should go. If there is a block, if something is blocking my way, I may climb over it, or go around it, or lean against it and take a nap. You don’t know, maybe I needed a nap.
P. S. This post is a PERFECT example of keeping on keeping on. I’m insecure because I feel I have nothing new to say. I am worried that you’ll say, Oh, that again. But I do my best to be authentic and to get some words down. Keeping my gears oiled, and hoping something here connects us.
And, I also want to say, Vote. For heaven’s sake, vote.