WRITER\u2019S UN-BLOCK<\/p>\n
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One of the most common complaints I hear from my writing
students is about getting blocked. Being unable to put anything on the page. Or\u00a0getting to a fork in the road with their story and feeling paralyzed, unable to\u00a0decide which direction to take. These stumbling blocks are legitimate sources\u00a0of anxiety for all of us writers who fear being judged by ourselves or by anyone\u00a0else. Unfortunately it happens to all of us and it goes something like this: You
have a great idea. Maybe it arrives in the middle of the night, when you\u2019re on\u00a0the treadmill or in the shower. You get excited and you can’t wait to dig in.\u00a0You make coffee, you\u2019re raring to go, until you sit down at the computer, place\u00a0your hands on the keyboard \u2013 and nothing happens.<\/p>\n
You\u00a0stare at your fingers. You talk to them and beg them to start moving. You Repeat whatever affirmations you can dream up: I can do this. I\u2019m a really good\u00a0writer. I write with ease and determination. I can do anything I set out to do.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0your fingers refuse to move. You’ve hit a brick wall, your mind is jumbled and\u00a0unfocused, skipping from thought to thought like an Orangutan, jumping from one\u00a0tree branch to the next, never resting or alighting anywhere. Writing anything\u00a0decent seems so remote, why bother? Sticking with your work feels foolish and\u00a0walking away feels cowardly. You wonder why you ever thought you could write and\u00a0you decide it would be a good idea to push away from the computer and water the\u00a0plants or run the vacuum over a perfectly clean carpet. Anything to distract you.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure there are several solutions to this dilemma, we all\u00a0have our own way of doing things and writers are supremely creative thinkers,
but only one has ever worked for me. For starters, I don’t get up. A Buddhist\u00a0teacher sat beside a meditator who was having a hard time and she simply said,\u00a0\u201cStay.\u201d I do that. I stay seated in the midst of my critical mind, I hear it\u00a0jabbering, I tell it to piss off and I start writing about not being able to\u00a0write. I can’t do this,\u201d I complain on the page. \u201cI\u2019m an imposter. Who do I\u00a0think I am? Who will care about anything I have to say? I don\u2019t even care.\u201d<\/p>\n
I keep writing about being blocked. About feeling shitty\u00a0about myself. About the frustration that has taken over my mind and thrown me
into a hole so deep, it seems like there\u2019s no way out. But I keep going.<\/p>\n
I continue to write about how I can\u2019t find the gumption or\u00a0the courage to keep starting over \u2013 until I suddenly see a pinpoint of light
and I realize I\u2019m writing. I\u2019d doing it. I\u2019m getting un-blocked. It doesn\u2019t
matter what I\u2019m saying. Good or bad have to go out the window. Who will read it\u00a0or like it is not only impossible to predict. It\u2019s also irrelevant. What\u00a0matters is that my fingers are moving across the keyboard and words are\u00a0appearing on the page. It\u2019s like a miracle as I continue throwing down words\u00a0that don\u2019t mean anything when the thing I wanted to write about shows up in my
mind. And off I go\u00a0<\/p>\n
The late Poet Laureate, Maya Angelou, said:<\/p>\n
What I try to do\u00a0is write. I may write for two weeks, \u201cthe cat sat on the mat, that is that, not\u00a0a rat.\u201d And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When\u00a0I\u2019m writing, I write. And then it\u2019s as if the muse is convinced that I\u2019m\u00a0serious and says, \u201cOkay. Okay. I\u2019ll come.\u201d<\/p>\n
It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel inspired. The muse, an\u00a0energy that fills you with beauty, expanded vision and boundless energy, may or
may not pay you a visit on any given day. She\u2019s undependable and flaky, like a\u00a0fickle lover who comes and goes as she pleases. Chasing her is pointless because she only shows up when she\u2019s good and ready and not a moment before. In fact, the more you chase her, the more she hides. The more you try to grab the edge of her skirt, the more she shrinks away. She\u2019s a demanding master, sneaky like a cat on the prowl, turning her back like she would prefer to have nothing to do with you. You can’t hold a cat in your lap when she doesn’t want to be there. You have to do your work without her until she comes to you.<\/p>\n
Granted, writing without the muse takes resolve and mental
discipline but if you wait for her in order to begin, you’re a waiter, not a\u00a0writer. A writer writes, whether he or she is inspired or not. And if you sit\u00a0and stay, you\u2019ll get so bored, you\u2019ll start writing about anything and pretty\u00a0soon, you\u2019re writing about everything. Frustration becomes excitement.\u00a0Disappointment becomes fulfillment. Judgment becomes anticipation. Writer\u2019s\u00a0block becomes writer\u2019s un-block. Prolific bestselling author, Jodi Picoult\u00a0says, \u201cYou may not always write well, but you can edit a bad page. You can’t
edit a blank page.\u201d<\/p>\n
Writing is like venturing into a dark forest with no maps or\u00a0road signs to protect you from unseen obstacles and pitfalls. It\u2019s like jumping
over hurdles with a blindfold. It takes courage to begin, vulnerability to keep\u00a0it authentic and perseverance to get to the other side. There will be fear to\u00a0endure and blocks to overcome but you can do it. You can stand on the shoulders\u00a0of great writers who came before you. None of them had an easy time of it no\u00a0matter what they say. And neither will you. But the lightness you\u2019ll feel as\u00a0you unburden your heart and tell your story is always worth the paper it\u2019s\u00a0written on.<\/p>\n
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WRITER\u2019S UN-BLOCK \u00a0 One of the most common complaints I hear from my writingstudents is about getting blocked. Being unable to put anything on the page. Or\u00a0getting to a fork in the road with their story and feeling paralyzed, unable to\u00a0decide which direction to take. These stumbling blocks are legitimate sources\u00a0of anxiety for all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2191,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions\/2191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}