I woke up this morning momentarily gripped by a fear and
uncertainty that has plagued me as of recent. Would today be like yesterday and
the day before and the day before? Would I spend the next fifteen hours walking
around my office in a daze trying to rip free of this chain of boredom? Would
today be the day I finally break this horrible bout of writer’s block?
For twenty-five plus years, I’ve woken each morning with my head
crammed full of ideas. Imaginary characters start to converse with me and I
find my thoughts drifting to other worlds and possible dimensions. However, for
the last few days these comforting and familiar figments of make-believe have
vanished.
I’ve never experienced
a block before and find it both terrifying and strangely liberating. Being a
writer is like waking up every morning for the rest of your life with homework to
do. There’s always a chapter to be edited or a scene that needs tightening; a
continuous mental itch to put down your thoughts that doesn’t ever get scratched
or go away. To not feel that itch is as strange as cold-turkeying an addiction;
like a smoker not being able to huff his first cigarette of the morning, or an
alkie denied his early-afternoon sauce. I literally had restless tremors.
The first two days of my block was bearable, and my creative
writing time was spent marketing my other novels (which is not necessarily a
bad thing) and my usual marketing time was spent trying to find my creativity. Day
three of my block was when I got scared. I spent two hours staring at the same page
in front of me. My newest dystopian novel (the one I’d been averaging 1,500
words a day) was stuck on the glowing computer screen like a dead fish in mud.
Television and video games rarely exist in my life. Perhaps,
that is the main reason I write. I’d rather create my own stories than watch
someone else’s imagination unfold on the screen or become a pretend animated
character in a programmer’s virtual reality game-world. I create my own virtual
realities. I can disappear at will into a character of my own choosing and
creation. That’s probably why I’m so sad that the ability went missing.
I find days without writing exceedingly long, believing hours
have droned by only to realize the day isn’t even half over. I don’t know how
normal, non-writers find enough stuff to do to fill the time (I know, those
with kids are cursing me right now). Only after I’ve put in a good three or
four hours of writing can I start my day feeling like I’ve accomplished
something, and by then I’m racing against the clock to get my normal, human
life activities done.
Happily, this morning I awoke with the tingles of creativity
again sparking in my mind and the dreaded, creative dead-weight lifted. After four
days of not “feeling it” my thoughts are again sharp, my worlds have returned,
and my characters are speaking to me.
Stephen King describes the breaking-writer’s-block emotion
best in his book ON WRITING. After years of drinking and drug addiction, Mr.
King finally got sober, only to realize with this new sobriety he had lost his
creativity. Finally, slowly, over a period of a few months, he found the beat
again and the joy. He describes the feeling as this;
“I came back to it (writing) the way folks come back to a
summer cottage after a long winter, checking first to make sure nothing has
been stolen or broken during the cold season. Nothing had been. It was still
all there, still all whole. Once the pipes were thawed out and the electricity was
turned back on, everything worked fine.”
It’s time to continue with my novel.
