Writer's block doesn't exist. That's what I've been told, and I believe it: the arguments are so logical. William Stafford was a noted writer's block skeptic. What you have to do, he said, is lower your standards. People who think they have writer's block are trying too hard to be good. Just write! he said. Just do it.
I had a teacher once who said that it was a matter of being too proud to write the crap that you have to write in order to get to the good stuff. I've also heard that there can't be any such thing as writer's block, because there's no such thing as carpenter's block or plumber's block or tennis block.
This is all true and convincing. Nevertheless, after six years of sitting down at my desk almost every day, after six years of just doing it, I have nothing to show for it. Well, I have hundreds of pages. But I have no novel, no short story, not even a haiku.
The pages fall into two categories. One: writing that, whether it is "good" or "bad," means nothing to me, and that I would just as soon throw out. It's empty. Or two: writing that I kind of like, that seems pretty true and not bad and maybe even funny, but for the life of me won't hang together in any kind of shape. It refuses to congeal into a thing with a beginning, middle, and end.
The best metaphor for how this all feels is impotence. You've done it before, you know in great detail how it's supposed to go off, and God knows you WANT it... but it ain't happening, baby.
There are about a thousand possible contributing factors (babies, politics, a contract that went sour, and yes, pride, and yes, wavering commitment, etc., etc.) none of which means a thing when it comes down to it. Kindly friends have suggested, "Well, maybe it's not meant to be right now... maybe you should try doing something else..." Ultimately this might be the sanest choice. But I can't not keep doing it. I can't stop trying to unlock this door. I know I have the key to it somewhere.
Showing posts with label writer's block. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writer's block. Show all posts
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Useful Self-Deception
I'm about a third of the way through a novel I've been writing for four months or so, and over the past few weeks the work ground to a halt. Part of the reason for this was a home renovation project we've been doing, and part was the holidays--but the fact was, I'd been kidding myself about the real reason, which is subtler, and is actually relevant to the work itself.
There comes a time in any creative project when you've got to face what it is you're actually doing, and the consequences of doing it. You might be inspired by certain details, characters, or themes, and this might propel you quite some distance--but at some point, you have to face the music. In my case, I had come to a point in the plot of my book when I had to decide if what I was writing was a work of realism, or something else entirely.
If you'd asked me this four months ago, I would have answered promptly: it's something else. But nobody asked me, least of all myself. Until this morning, when I sat down to write after a several weeks' slump, and realized that I couldn't write the next sentence without answering the question.
It was easy. I answered it and moved on, with a renewed sense of purpose, and the book is back on track.
Why couldn't I have asked myself this question four months ago, or even last month, before my slump? The fact is, I didn't realize it was there to ask. I needed the bulwark of the first hundred or so pages to take the leap of faith that would deliver me to the rest. I was engaged in four months of useful self-deception, to ready myself to know what I was doing.
Writing, I think, is often a process of useful self-deception, like the cartoon coyote's gravity-defying pause before he plunges at last into the canyon. You have to look deeply into some parts of yourself, while denying the existence of other, even more vital, parts. It's no wonder so many of us are drunks.
There comes a time in any creative project when you've got to face what it is you're actually doing, and the consequences of doing it. You might be inspired by certain details, characters, or themes, and this might propel you quite some distance--but at some point, you have to face the music. In my case, I had come to a point in the plot of my book when I had to decide if what I was writing was a work of realism, or something else entirely.
If you'd asked me this four months ago, I would have answered promptly: it's something else. But nobody asked me, least of all myself. Until this morning, when I sat down to write after a several weeks' slump, and realized that I couldn't write the next sentence without answering the question.
It was easy. I answered it and moved on, with a renewed sense of purpose, and the book is back on track.
Why couldn't I have asked myself this question four months ago, or even last month, before my slump? The fact is, I didn't realize it was there to ask. I needed the bulwark of the first hundred or so pages to take the leap of faith that would deliver me to the rest. I was engaged in four months of useful self-deception, to ready myself to know what I was doing.
Writing, I think, is often a process of useful self-deception, like the cartoon coyote's gravity-defying pause before he plunges at last into the canyon. You have to look deeply into some parts of yourself, while denying the existence of other, even more vital, parts. It's no wonder so many of us are drunks.
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