So, after writing about a hundred pages of a novel in the past three months, I am at a standstill. I’ve tried writing little bits, transitions, etc., but that did not get me very far, so I am instead now taking notes on the next story, which has characters and some action but no clear single plot, so it’s not exactly making me feel any better. Is it productive? Yes, potentially. Does it feel productive? Nope.
Author Archives: writerspilecki
Not Talking about It Doesn’t Make It Better
Artists are a superstitious lot. In a recent essay in the National Review, John J. Miller tells how some of the writers he interviewed refused to discuss writer’s block. One even said it was “the way some people won’t talk about cancer.” The implication is that talking about something will magnetize it to you and then you are done for.
Somehow I doubt that is how cancer works, and although I can imagine exceptions, I think that also isn’t how writer’s block works. Not talking about cancer, not getting tested doesn’t make cancer not hit you or not kill you. Generally speaking those strategies only make it worse.
One could argue, I suppose, that since writer’s block is a psychological/intellectual/emotional issue, focusing time and attention on it might foster the self-doubt that could create it, but I think if that’s true, you might already be dealing with it, as if the talk only watered the seeds that were already there. But if somebody is going strong on a piece of work, what are they so afraid of?
Also, just as talking about cancer to just anybody isn’t necessarily going to solve it—unless you are talking to a certified doctor/surgeon, the cure isn’t coming—so talking about your writer’s block to your cat/boyfriend/boss may not help either and depending on how they respond to your concerns, yes, it might well hurt. But there are people out there who can help, people who know what kinds of things can cause blocks, so you can talk about the actual problem rather than the symptom of the problem. (And no, I don’t mean some kind of Freudian b^!!$&!t, which I only mention at all because Miller points out that it was a Freudian who invented the term writer’s block.)
Just a surface level consideration brings up a number of possibilities: crippling anxiety, overwork in other arenas, tackling a problem the writer doesn’t know how to solve (and may not realize it), inadequate sleep or hydration, and of course, the one that Miller highlights, perfectionism.
Perfectionism is one of the most dangerous, because it may actually have been useful to the writer in the past. I see a lot of MIT students who got here by insisting on perfection, but will never graduate until they let go of it. As Miller says, “They may be letting the perfect become the enemy of the good—or even worse, as my old boss Fred Barnes once put it, they’re letting the pretty good become the enemy of the good enough.”
One of the exercises that helps is the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) strategy: give yourself a deadline and some supporters and write an insane number of words per day for a very limited time, focusing on quantity, not quality. Make friends with the good enough. It’s not a whole solution, but it’s a start.
Miller, John J. “Wordsmiths Without Words.” National Review 23 May 2016: 23-24.
Writing Prompt #1: Challenge Accepted
The Legend of Sir Chester Nutt
(or, Thank God for Karma, She’s Less of a Bitch than We Thought)
One day in your car for a whirl,
You swerved to avoid a squirrel.
He swore on his life
That he’d make it right,
Then he went off to train with the girls.
Xena taught him to use a sword,
And Wonder Woman her golden cord.
And he trained his might
To become overnight
The squirrel who quite loudly roared.
Then one night you are held up with knives
And you rightfully fear for your life.
You squirm and you struggle
With this frightful big muggle
And then suddenly, that squirrel arrives.
He’s a great sight for you where you cower
Defeating your foe with great power!
With a whack and a thrust,
He’s the hero to trust,
Defending you in your dark hour.
Driving around the Writer’s Block
So here I am at work staring at a blank Word document while my schedule goes from blue—filled with clients—to white—abandoned and alone. Ordinarily I would simply write, but my brain is empty. I have written at least a hundred pages of my novel and don’t really know how to get over the middle hump—ALWAYS my problem with every novel I have ever tried to write.
I suspect I’ll just skip several weeks and attack some of the scenes I do sort of know what will happen in—is that sentence even English? Outline the third wedding and some of the anniversary party, hope that inspiration will strike or my characters will have interesting conversations and mention something they have been working on or I don’t even know, anything.
Writing is Like Driving, Y/N?
So my friend Pamela was telling me how she tells her grad students that writing is like driving. You have the steering wheel and the gear shift, but then you also have traffic and rain and a spider coming down from your rearview mirror, and construction, and you have to get to work on time, and you have to manage all those things at once. Writing, she says, is like that: managing voice and audience and content and deadlines, and context and style and the totally random page count and All The Things, all at the same time.
I feel as though that “all at the same time” part doesn’t entirely work for me, maybe because I think about managing some of that stuff in one draft, and other tasks in other drafts.
But, at the very least, I am glad she didn’t say driving was like parallel parking, because apparently, in Boston, nobody gets taught the methodical way to parallel park and everybody just does it by guess and by God.
But maybe that’s what revision is like.
Virginia Woolf: Words Fail Me
Jilliane Hoffman nails it. “I have had my vision.”
Pumpkin Spice Nachos, et al.
Happy Fall, y’all. It’s that time of year, when everybody is eating, drinking and presumably smoking Pumpkin Spice Fill-in-the-Blank. I admit to being guilty. The Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Waffles have fewer calories, less sodium and cholesterol and more vitamins than their other flavors, and let’s face it a warm waffle on a chilly morning is a happy thing.
But pumpkin nachos? Oh, Joe, what were you thinking?
At least we now know what Linus van Pelt will be munching while waiting in his sincere pumpkin patch on Halloween.
I’m Baaaack
So although most people go on summer vacation by, for example, actually going somewhere that is else, I took a summer vacation by working on my novel and basically abandoned the Blogosphere for two months. There were no beaches, maybe two cocktails, and zero blogs about sharks. Or much of anything else, or at least not written by me.
I would like to thank Wine and Cheese (Doodles), A Kinder Way, and Robert Okaji for letting me steal, um, reblog their wonderful work to keep my blog alive while I was writing 37,000 words of a book that starts with someone creating an OKCupid profile.
Obviously, the book will be a comedy.
So although I have not been writing for YOU, Gentle Readers, I have been writing, and thinking about writing, as always, 24/7. So we will declare vacation over, alas, but at least you get ME back.
Lucky you!
Robert Okaji: A good onion, a good knife, a good poem. What more does a girl want?
Onions My knife never sings but hums instead when withdrawn from its block, a metallic whisper so modest only the wielder may hear it. Or perhaps the dog, who seems to enjoy the kitchen nearly as much as I. A Japanese blade, it’s a joy to hold, perfectly balanced, stainless steel-molybdenum alloy, blade and handle […]
Hold The Door
I don’t have a clue what this could possibly have to do with poetry, but it is a nice piece of writing about an important little piece of life. Thank you, Dina!
Between drop offs and pick ups, volunteering, and just generally mucking about, I’m at my kids’ school a lot. Each time I watch as students rush through doors with no regard whatsoever as to whether it might slam in the face of the person behind them. I don’t fault them–they’re kids, I’m glad to see them hurling themselves head first into life–but during the times I’m responsible for the care of these magical creatures, I’ve been testing my newest principle.
It goes a little something like this: If everyone holds the door for the person behind them, we all take on just a little bit of responsibility for the well-being of someone else.
It’s pretty simple right? By holding the door until the person behind you takes over, you’re making sure that person doesn’t get a nose full of glass. It’s courtesy 101.
That’s the literal principle. It works just as well…
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buildingapoem 