A writer friend emailed me the other day to say how she was doing, telling me about a trip to Montauk she took earlier in the year, and that she was ready for her next vacation. She had planned go to her annual writer's conference in Taos but canceled due to the wildfires going on there. Determined to use her vacation time to stay home and write, she said she was concerned she couldn't relax with her work routine on hold, and that she had been totally blocked and couldn't write.
She was doing yoga and meditation, watching movies and reading books to get inspired. She asked me for some tips on "getting the creative juices flowing."
Something stood out to me like the elephant in the room, and so I wrote her back the following:
One thing I would like to say to you about writing, is, well, you just did it. You wrote me an email. It was a rather long email actually, so you actually just wrote quite a bit! (Not that I mind, I'm just making a point). So maybe you could write a fake email to someone for starters, or write an email as if you are your mother nagging you about something, or some other person you know telling you about something that happened to them.
You told me stories in that email. Stories about you, and your life, and the wildfires in Taos, and what's going on with you.
I would also strongly suggest that rather than watching and reading things for inspiration, (which I also say I'm doing), instead just write - write about that trip you took, (because that was a real experience) or just do some stream of consciousness writing, like the "morning pages" in the Artist's Way. Just write journal style for awhile, and see if it takes your imagination anywhere, or brings you anything.
My favorite guilty pleasure has been watching The X-Files. At one point I actually convinced myself it was writing research for a new play. I even tried to write a parody of it. Bad idea and I stopped that quick. No. It's just me being lazy, and wanting to watch the X-Files. It's just an escape!
Let me know how the writing goes!
Here is what she wrote back:
Well, at least I wrote this today! :) I'll tell you -- just typing this at my work table with the sun setting outside, with no incoming work related e-mails, feels really good too. I think that I'm going to try your idea of pretending to write to someone, maybe in my own voice, maybe in character. I'll let you know how it goes!
Within 45 minutes, she wrote me back with this subject header: "Here's a little something I just wrote off the top of my head using your advice." It was a conversation between two characters, but not just any conversation. It was a young woman confessing to a wise aunt that her boyfriend was hitting her - in black, southern dialect no less! I couldn't believe how good it was!
I let her know, and she wrote back and said, "It was really weird -- I started writing about a guy I know who's very into a certain kind of music, and then the voice of Bessie came out of nowhere! I have an art book on my writing table about the quilts from Gees's Bend, so that's where Aunt Gee came from. Then they did all of the talking and I just sat back and took dictation. Fun!...Thanks for helping me break my block!"
I realize now what happened. A writing mentor of mine, Lisa Soland, is working on a new book called "The Writer's Motivation," and has been sharing rough chapters with people who have taken her workshop. One of my favorites is called "Your Presence." In it she describes just sitting down with a blocked writer from her workshop at coffee and being there while this person writes something - anything. That's exactly what happened here, only by email. I didn't tell my friend what to write, I just sort of witnessed her writing it as if I was was right there with her. That's all she needed. It's probably one of the things she would have experienced at the writer's conference and she was missing it.
Writing blocks seem to mainly be in our own heads. We create them, and we can break out of them. It's easy to blame circumstances, people, our schedules, all which are very real factors, but really having an ideal writing situation is rare. There's always a disruption, noise, or interruption - like getting the work emails my friend was talking about. I will go to coffee shops with the intention to write, and suddenly every noise in the shop - the grinding of the coffee machines, the banging of utensils in the sink, the music - these will just fill my head and I can't think. Then other times in the very same coffee shop, I don't even notice the noise. My mind shifts to the world of my play, and that totally has my focus.
There is something that happens when you get into the "writing zone," and there really are no hard and fast rules on how to get there or on what keeps you from getting there. You just have to keep trying new things. In the case of my friend, she just needed someone to say, "Hey, you're already writing," to help her make a slight mental shift and get her into "just taking dictation," mode. That's a writing mode we all aspire to!
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