Solving Writer’s Block
I mentioned in my last blog that I spent an hour with my son, Nathan in the Barnes & Noble cafe. He pointed out that I hadn’t written anything on my blog in a long time. The observation stayed with me and shook me out of my self-imposed writer’s block. He said something else that made me think. “I don’t know how you keep up the energy to do two blogs plus all the other stuff you do.”
I thought about that all day in relation to little writing I’ve done lately.
First, I don’t often get writer’s block. I don’t believe in it. But I do run out of energy and when that happens I’m not as in tune with things around me. I’m not observant and therefore wind up with little to say.
I do think that on a regular basis the creative well runs dry and when it does, I don’t waste time fretting about it. I think if you force yourself to do one thing too much, you drive it into the ground. You get as stale as old coffee grinds, and creatively just as useless.
So, when the writing isn’t coming I do other things — read, play with the dogs, take pictures, study sound recording. All the while, the “writer” is on a fishing trip, half asleep, listening to the chickadees in the trees above and the lapping creek water below.
Sometimes I just study the clouds and marvel at the huge work of art above me that changes every second and is always perfect.
I clip my Dwarf Japanese Juniper and study the shape of its trunk and the branches and visualize how I want them to grow.
Creative energy quietly flows in and when the time is right, when the right feeling is felt, or something is said in a conversation, the energy, words and thoughts start flowing again.