Writer's Block

It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're a lowly college student stumbling across the words in your essay or a prolific author looking to pen his/her next multi-million-dollar best-selling novel, eventually, you will get hit with writer's block.

It's not just about finding a topic or subject matter, but about finding the words and then letting them flow. When you stare at a blank piece of paper or an empty page in Microsoft Word on your computer monitor, the effect is the same--creativity's desolation. What are you going to write? How do you fill in that space? Makes you wonder how all the great artistic masterpieces by Picasso, Van Gogh, or Dali got started on a stark white canvas. How did they overcome it? But for writers, the blank page is even more intimidating.

With painters, the brush is their pen. They place strokes of colors on canvas and tell a story right from the beginning, almost effortlessly. Not so with writers. Pens and keyboards are the instruments, but words are the paints. You cannot mix your words like you can with paints. There are grammar rules to follow, unless you're composing a poem and then freestylin' it. No, the visual artist has it much easier. All he needs to be creative is Mona Lisa's smile. It is the writer who lacks the inspiration and gets blocked.

If only there was a valve one could turn to get the words and ideas flowing again. Well, there is. It is a style of writing made popular in the works of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, it's called "stream of consciousness." For me, this is the only way to triumph over dreaded writer's block. It is like giving me a sledgehammer to break puny cinder blocks with my mighty mental muscle. I take the topic and let it flow. Like jumping on an inner tube and riding down the wild rapids of the Colorado River. Sometimes, you never know where the ride will take you, but when you reach your end, you know that you've gone on one exhilirating journey.

I take that stream of consciousness and use it to my writing advantage. I begin with a word or phrase, the jist of an idea and, either through alliteration or rhyming, I find my next word and, before I know it, I'm rolling along like a snowball down the side of Mount Everest, collecting more snowflakes and threatening an avalanche. Here is my effort for tonight (with the text in blue to match my mood):

Writer's block. My stock character in a pageless novel. Not quite so novel of an idea. Like a light bulb. A broken filament to never generate light again. Darkness. Lost without a glimmer of light, no foresight into what I wish to write. To pen, the words haunting me--flittering around me, unseen like taunting ghosts. Ghostwriters. Give them the pen and key to my brain. Let them write, I refrain. My credibility derailed like a train, a wreck...oh, what the heck! I give up. Or do I? I must continue. This is not the end. I have more to say and convey. And this is how, and where, and when, and why my voice wants to speak. So listen. Or better yet, read. This is what I need. It's not a block, it's a writer's blade. Death by a thousand cuts. The words from me bleed out. I shout...it's done! Consummatum est!

~Andrew K.