Until recently, I have always envisioned writer’s block as a stop in a piece where the writer, for whatever reason, can go no further. Many writers, for as creative as they are, have a hard time letting go of the thread of a story until it is finished. There are few stories that will allow a writer to work on something else and wait to be told.
So when that block comes, it is exactly what it sounds like – a huge, onerous, immovable, intangible stoppage in the creative process. Beating your head against it doesn’t work, trying to write something else doesn’t work and writing for the sake of writing doesn’t work. There isn’t any place to go but through the block.
I can generally deal with blocks because I am able to give myself time to stand back from the work, and I know that by going out and doing something, I will find a way through the block when I get back. I am also not so obsessive a writer that I care to finish every project, which is a detriment in some ways.
I experienced something in the last week that is much more serious than a block. I experienced an emptiness, a drain, a lack of desire. I believe that Natalie Whipple has experienced a similar feeling – though, frankly, I shouldn’t assign names or descriptions to another person’s feelings, her blogs seem to speak about the hardships and joys of being a writer, and several times, she has written exactly what I have felt if not for the same reasons.
Anyway, here is the problem. I sat down with my idea notebook. I looked at all of the ideas, chose one that I wanted to tackle that day, opened up a blank Word document and… and… and… nothing. Nothing? Nothing. Wait, (nervous laugh), there can’t be nothing. There has to be something, anything. My hands rest above the keyboard, but my fingers won’t type a letter – not a single letter, not even a letter to start writing about what I was feeling at that particular moment because what I was feeling was nothing. I wanted to feel desire, joy, pain, anxiety, anything, and instead, all I felt was empty. It was as if I had given up all of my creativity, all of my writing skills and all of myself already, and that nothing more would come.
Because of classes, I had spent a week away from writing and away from being creative. I had spent a week controlling my creative urges to please and satisfy and get through a project that required me not to be creative. I had suppressed that part of me that I value most to keep the peace and to not fail, and to not allow others to fail, at something that was required for my degree. This was my payback. My muse was out to dinner with someone who would pay attention to her. I had to get her back.
Here is where the process of creation gets jenky for some people. I knew that I could sit in front of the blank computer screen for three days, and it would remain blank. There would be nothing to write about. Some people say that when you don’t feel like writing, you should write anyway. It doesn’t work like that – the easiest way to grow to hate something is to try and force yourself to do it.
Creation cannot be forced. It can be coerced, but it cannot be forced. I had to set up a way to put a call into my muse and then distract my mind from the emptiness. I had to change scenery, find someone to hang out with and do something that would be different than what I had done the last week. Then I could come back to the blank page and get started again.