Blocked Much?

by Paula J. Sanders

Writer’s block is a female dog, in heat with a bad mood, no doubt about it. To further the issues a writer may have with creating is that one stresses over the inability to “put it on the page” as my friend C. Stephen Foster always says. But it’s not that easy? Or is it…

After multiple deaths in my family, writer’s block sat in and lingered, pointing and laughing at me, manifesting itself into the ‘lack of confidence monster” under my bed. I pouted and whined to friends but never really sought remedy. My friend Richard Ali, figured it could have been the case of over working myself, with two jobs during the summer, stating “…its quite a drag on creativity.” He was right of course, so I dropped one job and stuck with the one I felt was more creatively conducive.

I reached out to a few of my family of writers to get ideas on how they deal with or have dealt with writer’s block. My first response was from Montre Bible, author, artist, actor and self-proclaimed, local internet socialite, who provided a simple suggestion, “…you just stop and live a little... or just write a little...a sentence...don’t force it... but you need to relax or read a book…”

Normally, I would turn to my favorite author and muse, James Baldwin, and read the beginning of “Just Above my Head”. There is something about the grief of Hall Montana that blasts me back into the reality of how good I really do have it; most of the time. Only in the moment, in the midst of my own grief, I couldn’t bring myself to read about the loss of a little brother, having suffered the loss of my god-brother “Moses”. So I shied away from what usually works for me out of sadness and fear of memories. 

However, according to Richard Ali, my most distant friend, a writer from Jos Plateau, Nigeria, author of “City of Memories”, believes a book could be just the seed you need. “The trick is to write whatever comes, usually stuff unrelated to the project at hand or to alternately pick up a book and read. Ideas have a way of doing strange fertilizing things to each other such that soon enough you're writing again on course.” Ah, Richard, the Eloquent, his words already taking root; growing. What might we find, bound and hidden away in the pages of our favorite text or a strange new novel, giving off ghostly musings at our reading leisure?

Do writers have leisure time? As a writer, have you ever told someone that writing is what you do for a living? Have they responded with, “Oh so you just sit around and write.” Um, yes because it’s just that damn easy: the starving, reclusive and lonely author, pondering life over the soothing whirl of his vintage electric typewriter.

It’s much more serious than that. “I write morning pages and I write and I remember each day. And if that fails I set a date to write with a friend--- no talking just lay track.” An avid believer in “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron,  actor, writer and author of “Awakening the Actor Within”, teacher and a second personality of Miss Celie (from The Color Purple), C. Stephen Foster, proffered his ritual, which has proven to be the golden egg for him.

But a thousand year old egg for me... I started my morning pages, for one morning and stopped when I didn’t wake up writing the latest greatest story in the world. The most frustrating thing about battling writer’s block is how many ideas without inspiration I had swarming around my head like drunken bees. Similar to the creative fate of my friend, co-founder of Blaque Artists Collective and creative partner in dramatic crime, Buster Spiller. This is what he shared:

“I wait for inspiration to write. If I really want to 'spark' that inspiration, I watch a movie or TV program related to the theme and that sometimes helps. For me, writing is a 'feeling'. Like yesterday, I was thinking about writing something that would be the equivalent of "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry in terms of the need for a GOOD family drama with issues of today…That thought stayed with me and this morning when I got up, I had the concept. Then I had the title. [My partner] and I walked the babies (Sadie, elder black lab and Beau, baby lab and newest member of the family) around the lake, the characters started to come to me but vaguely. I got home to write and BOOM, writer's block. LOL! By chance (and probably not), my female cousin called to talk about some family issues. As we talked, the character descriptions came to me like rapid fire! She had to hang up momentarily and during that brief period, I cranked out the descriptions of the 8 characters.”

So is it providence for Buster or maybe for everyone. I learned from Stephen that what you put out into the Universe is what you get back. So as writers perhaps we are always putting out or pleading to the Universe for inspiration and suddenly it comes in the form of a phone call, text chain message or finding an old picture of something that sparks a memory and then…your fingers tingle.

Is there a missing method? A secret to getting around this giant block of Gibraltar halting the flow of creativity? Donnie Wilson, writer, director, producer and dear friend has it almost down to a science. “Whenever I encounter writer's block, I will do a combination of one or three things":

1. Completely remove myself from the piece to involve myself in someone else's Creative endeavor. This usually reinvigorates my writing immediately.

2. I will highlight key questions regarding the direction of the work and mull over them ad nauseum until my sub conscious is engaged. When I go to sleep my creative juices start to flow, sometimes waking me in the middle of the night with inspiration. However, this method is not time dependable and can't be relied upon if I have a deadline. But I must say it has created some of my best writing.

3. I push through it. Not giving myself a break. And if it a small blockage, I am able to move creatively forward.”

illustration by JADII

Pushing through it, in the end, isn’t that what any good writer will do, deadline or not. Don’t we have to get it out and on the page? Isn’t there within us some eternal itch, the gifting we have pressing against us like tiny fetus feet, waiting to be born? And what do we do? We push.

Of course during the worrying about my bout of never ending writer’s block, inspiration dropped down on me like a ton of bricks and the veil was lifted. Now, I am writing, revising and writing some more. I guess my personal solution: stop stressing about it, stop obsessing about it and the words will come. Which-ever advice you take or ignore, the ultimate goal is to tell the story, get it out, at all creative cost, dammit tell that story and bask in your own personal glory.

Mantra: “Writing is everything to me.” Repeat.