Writer's Block: Real or Imagined?
Writing Lab on 5 ways to get through to the other side & a prompt
A look “behind the scenes,” on motherhood and a sudden and shocking case of writer’s block, 5 ways to blast through the block, and one more possibility that has to do with trauma to the brain.
Plus, your prompt.
She’s gone back to Chicago (my 21-year-old daughter), and one part of life, the hands-on-mom, ends, and the long-distance-text-phone-mom starts up again.
Time to get back to writing, I tell myself now, and finally, FINALLY, sit down with my novel, The Home Tree, to think about these people and this world I’ve created.
Set in WWI Italy, The Home Tree is a sweeping story of yearning and loss, of greed and inner demons, of divine intervention and the renewal of faith. It’s also a tale I’ve worked on (and off) for several years.
It’s in what I’d call the “final” phase, meaning I’m nearly done…but as much as I love the book and the characters, I have gotten off track. Worse, I’ve lost my passion for the story and (gasp) for writing in general.
Writing Re-entry Techniques
For me, nothing is more distressful than to lose it this way. I cannot help think the very worst: It’s finally over. I’m done with my lifelong passion, my calling, and my reason for being on this planet.
It’s funny, as I write these words because they are so predictable! I’ve been here before (and will be here again), yet the same chorus plays in my head and I float (stumble/sleepwalk) through an apathetic funk of disinterest. It’s like this every time.
Here are a few ways I’ve gotten out.
Lament-on-the-page: Write about your writing as I’ve done above. Describe your project, and as part of that, be brutally honest about how you are feeling. It seems counter-productive, but it’s not. It’s a bit like cleaning out the dusty and overfilled cabinet you’ve been ignoring, or your junk drawer, or your long-neglected car. The act of writing, honestly, helps to organize your mind and sort out your priorities. Remember that all storytelling, as Robert Olen Butler tells us in his From Where You Dream, is about feeling, longing, and desire. To admit to them by writing them out on the page helps shake you back to the center of what being an artist is about.
Picture it: Get a few photos of your world out and stick them where you can see them. Most of us are writing about people we know (if it’s a memoir), and others of us are “making it up” while dipping into history for reference points. Still, others might be writing completely imagined worlds. It doesn’t matter what you are doing. Thanks to the internet, historical books, and basic drawing skills, you have vast access to a world of images that you can either print out or invent. This is a fun exercise because it’s “busy work,” too, which can help shake your funk away. You are no longer lamenting, you are making something and putting it up around you as a reminder, adornment, and inspiration.
A poem or a quote: The poem below comes from a great book I found while pursuing Powell’s a few years back. Powell’s is basically a giant re-sale store with every book imaginable. And not to worry, every big town has a place like Powell’s. Your job then is to go visit a bookstore and take yourself to the section that covers your subject matter. Find something like Il Porto Sepolti and spend a bit of time paging through. In this way, you can get into the heads of the people of your era. I also painted a few of the images from the book, meaning I copied them with my own paper and paints, then hung them with the photographs (see above).
The air is pocked
like lace
from the gunfire
of men
hidden
in trenches
like snails in shells
~ from Il Porto Sepolti, war poems of WWI by Giuseppe Ungaretti
Print/Read: This is not my favorite remedy because, well, it can backfire and steer the confused writer in the opposite direction of her intended target of a finished book. While the printing part is satisfying, the moment I start reading (pencil in hand), I find a ton of sentence-level changes, which I mark with increasing frustration (I thought it was all so good. Drat).
So before you go too far down this rabbit-hole, I urge you to read only until you have fully re-entered your world. Yes, go ahead and scratch down those line edits, but once you’ve picked up the storyline, make yourself stop reading and stop with the line-by-line edits, too. Instead, start documenting—in a more general way—what’s going on in each chapter. Focus fully on the development of the whole story.
This is where I am today. I have read about 15,000 of the 60,000 finished words and feel connected to the whole again. Now, I will sit down with a big art pad and start charting what happens in a more general way. Yes, you can go back and put in those line edits you’ve made, but I would encourage you to wait for a short day of writing when you want to do something but don’t have time for a big creative day or when you are blocked in the future, or when you want to do some busy work. But I urge you to resist the temptation to start over, which only adds several months, maybe even a year, to your project.
Leaving holes: After all these techniques I’ve listed have been tried, and you find you still remain stuck or lack the vision to know what comes next, I suggest something I call “plot hopping.” This is easier when you have written through a book many times, which I have with The Home Tree. I know my ending and can pick up where the book surges forward easily and write to the end. Yes, it’s slightly annoying not to have previous sections worked out, but I can live with such annoyance because I know I can go back and fix them. This last technique is about faith. The story is in you, it’s always been in you, and by writing this way, you are proving that to yourself.
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