Two people have confided to me recently that they are wrestling with writer's block. They are facing blank pages and, like John Prine and his bowl of oatmeal, they are losing the stare-down contest.
I feel "blocked" every so often. The feeling used to worry me that maybe I can't write any longer, I'm washed up. Over time, though, it has come to mean that, for the nonce, I have nothing to say or no way to say poetically what I'm feeling and thinking. Over time, I have learned to recognize that there are periods when I'm not feeling or thinking anything. Experience has taught me that this will pass, like a cold or a charley horse, maybe in the next few moments, maybe by next week, maybe a month from now. So I've learned to not treat creative blocks as The End. I don't disregard them--they're aren't trivial in my writing life--but I no longer fret over them.
Instead, I prepare for their end.
What do I mean by this? I read. I experiment more in my journal, trying out new tropes or images or figures, new forms, new subjects. (I do NOT write about my block. I've tried that before and it just makes me feel worse, more blocked. And whiny.) I go back to certain books of poetry or lyrical writing that in the past have given me a jolt back into the creative. I tackle a style of writing or a certain poet's work that has always been difficult to understand or connect with, and I read it extremely closely, and then write about it in my journal. I listen to recordings of poets reading their work. I own a marvelous set of CDs of Seamus Heaney reading every one of his books, first to last. I paid a dear price for it on a trip to Dublin years ago and have never regretted the outlay. That voice and those poems together . . . I am almost always brought back to earth.
My journals from the late '90s through the early 2000s are filled with practice writing. Blocks seemed to occur more often in that period. But by that time I'd learned to look at a block not as a problem but as an opportunity. Those journals contain page on page of half-lines and other kinds of fragments; lists of possible poem titles; experiments with stream-of-consciousness; rhyming exercises; and, most useful, aphorisms, hundreds of them. Nobody needs to read this stuff but me, and, I have to admit, much of it is pretty lame. But equally much of it provides material for new poems even today.
I listen. Have you ever experienced a work of art that "speaks" to you? I mean not so much that it expresses a shared emotion or opinion, but that you hear its voice as high-toned or low, shrill or serene, edgy or mellifluous, direct or ironic? I hear such voices from paintings sometimes, and in the movements of a dance. I hear rhythms and melodies, pitches and stresses that, sometimes, approximate lines of a poem, a cascade of verbal images, a cadence which might turn into a phrase that itself might produce a flow of thought and feeling.
If all else fails, I accept the block for what it is, a forced hiatus (sometimes, even a respite!) during which my imagination can roam other byways or, simply, rest. Another common metaphor for this is lying fallow.
The point is, I try to embrace my writer's block, let it have its day, but use the space to prepare for writing's return.
I feel "blocked" every so often. The feeling used to worry me that maybe I can't write any longer, I'm washed up. Over time, though, it has come to mean that, for the nonce, I have nothing to say or no way to say poetically what I'm feeling and thinking. Over time, I have learned to recognize that there are periods when I'm not feeling or thinking anything. Experience has taught me that this will pass, like a cold or a charley horse, maybe in the next few moments, maybe by next week, maybe a month from now. So I've learned to not treat creative blocks as The End. I don't disregard them--they're aren't trivial in my writing life--but I no longer fret over them.
Instead, I prepare for their end.
What do I mean by this? I read. I experiment more in my journal, trying out new tropes or images or figures, new forms, new subjects. (I do NOT write about my block. I've tried that before and it just makes me feel worse, more blocked. And whiny.) I go back to certain books of poetry or lyrical writing that in the past have given me a jolt back into the creative. I tackle a style of writing or a certain poet's work that has always been difficult to understand or connect with, and I read it extremely closely, and then write about it in my journal. I listen to recordings of poets reading their work. I own a marvelous set of CDs of Seamus Heaney reading every one of his books, first to last. I paid a dear price for it on a trip to Dublin years ago and have never regretted the outlay. That voice and those poems together . . . I am almost always brought back to earth.
My journals from the late '90s through the early 2000s are filled with practice writing. Blocks seemed to occur more often in that period. But by that time I'd learned to look at a block not as a problem but as an opportunity. Those journals contain page on page of half-lines and other kinds of fragments; lists of possible poem titles; experiments with stream-of-consciousness; rhyming exercises; and, most useful, aphorisms, hundreds of them. Nobody needs to read this stuff but me, and, I have to admit, much of it is pretty lame. But equally much of it provides material for new poems even today.
I listen. Have you ever experienced a work of art that "speaks" to you? I mean not so much that it expresses a shared emotion or opinion, but that you hear its voice as high-toned or low, shrill or serene, edgy or mellifluous, direct or ironic? I hear such voices from paintings sometimes, and in the movements of a dance. I hear rhythms and melodies, pitches and stresses that, sometimes, approximate lines of a poem, a cascade of verbal images, a cadence which might turn into a phrase that itself might produce a flow of thought and feeling.
If all else fails, I accept the block for what it is, a forced hiatus (sometimes, even a respite!) during which my imagination can roam other byways or, simply, rest. Another common metaphor for this is lying fallow.
The point is, I try to embrace my writer's block, let it have its day, but use the space to prepare for writing's return.
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