What to do when the creative flow slows to a trickle

So, yeah, the last six posts were reruns from 10 years ago. Two reasons for that. First, I recently rediscovered the pre-Wordpress edition of this blog, still hanging out there and containing stuff I’m glad I wrote, so I thought it would be fun to re-share and reclaim some of it.

Second, wow, I hit a wall. Wow, the walls you hit sometimes when you write for a living.

This is an odd one. I’ve been cruising along at the day job, type type typing away and getting ’er done, but sit me down with my journal and favorite pen, place me in front of a novel in progress, or even open up a blank screen to write a blog post, and blam! It’s an ugly sight. Or rather, there’s nothing to be seen. A vague scribble — OK, at least I write down the date — a blinking cursor after “and then she …” or simply a blank screen that won’t unblank. All during National Novel Writing Month; oh, the irony.

And so I peek back at what I was writing in olden times, and it seems better than whatever I might have written during this lull.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven, and there are times when the flow slows to a trickle and there are times when the flow is a raging river. Beat yourself up too much over the trickle — OMG OMG OMG I CAN’T WRITE OMG I CAN’T WRITE OMG WHAT IF I NEVER COULD WRITE IN THE FIRST PLACE OMG OMG — and the next thing you know, you’re over in the corner drinking Yuengling and watching Season 6 Episodes 7 through 11 of something you don’t remember 10 minutes later.

But beat yourself up too little over the trickle, and the trickle dwindles to nothing. Back in 2011, I wrote only one post between mid-July and the beginning of October. That’s what happens when you let it. At some point you have to say, “I don’t care if I write about not being able to write, I have to write something, anything, to get the flow back.” The alternative is three or four months go by and everyone, beginning with yourself, thinking WTF.

It’s a comfort to know “real” writers have moments like this, fighting The Resistance or The Dip or self-doubt in general, and not just wannabe shmucks like me. I imagine John Milton sitting at his desk with paper and quill thinking, “Who the bejeebers is ever going to read an epic poem about the devil organizing a revolution against God? For crying’ out loud, everyone knows how it ends anyway.”

Those are the times you get up and walk away. No, really. Get out in the air, take a walk, notice that the sky is still big and beautiful, the birds are still singing, and holy cow is it colder than it was a few days ago. And while you’re busying yourself not worrying about it, all of a sudden you have six ideas for blog posts, and not only do you know what she does next but you know how the story ends, and you can’t wait to get back to your writing station to get it all down.

The trick is to know the difference between the Yuengling-and-binge-watching stepping away and the rest-and-recharge stepping away. In a book I just read, Be a Writing Machine, Michael La Ronn said he sits up and takes notice when he dips belong a certain range of words per day for two days in a row. That seems vigilant enough: Everyone has an off day, but two days could be the beginning of a bad habit.

In other words, see you tomorrow with another something new.

Listening: I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times

“I keep looking for a place to fit where I can speak my mind…”

The mark of a great artist is that she puts words or images to a thought or feeling that is inside many people but hasn’t been expressed in a way that most of us will understand.

Brian Wilson is a great artist.

In the song “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” back in 1966, Wilson puts words and music to the awkward feeling that each and every one of us feels when we recognize there is no one else in the world quite like “me.”

“I’ve been trying hard to find the people That I won’t leave behind …”

The search for friendship, the search for meaning, the search for “fitting in.” Ultimately we won’t find complete fulfillment from other people. John Maxwell writes about being in the audience when someone asked his wife if “John makes you happy” and getting surprised when she responded, “No.”

Then she explained that true happiness is something you find inside yourself and not the responsibility of other people — and he realized she was right.

“They say I got brains, but they ain’t doing me no good; I wish they would …”

As a result of that realization, Wilson sings, “Sometimes I feel very sad,” and he gets frustrated when his hopes and expectations don’t quite come true …

“Each time things start to happen again, I think I got something good goin’ for myself, but what goes wrong …”

The sadness makes Wilson wonder if “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times,” but in giving voice to the sadness, he touches something in every heart, the sense of uniqueness that is both the joy and curse of our existence. He sings about the loneliness of being someone who is unlike any other living soul on Earth, just like everyone else.

“Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around, no one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found – Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out? What’s it all about?”

But there is also the joy in realization – If Brian Wilson can give voice to my loneliness, I’m not alone.

And if each of us is a unique being, how precious that is: How important it is that we treat each other with the respect and care that something precious and unique deserves.

None of us will ever quite fit in precisely, because we were designed to be different. That can make us sad and lonely, but it can also give us strength and inspiration, voiced in such motivational clichés as “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.”

Looking for a place to fit where you can speak your mind? So is everyone else — so gain power from that fact and speak your mind whether you fit or not.

Do the thing you fear, and you will find, like Brian Wilson did, that you have something to say that people need to hear.

From July 19, 2011, with slight revisions

A ride on the time machine

(from my blog, Nov. 22, 2011; I adjusted the number of years that have gone by)

We had a substitute teacher that day. She was much older than our regular fifth-grade teacher at Elementary School No. 1 in Little Falls, N.J.

A little after 1:30 the principal, Mr. Laux, unexpectedly poked his nose into the room and announced that President Kennedy had been fatally shot in Dallas.

Everything went kind of numb then. The substitute teacher was sad and upset, but she told the story of when she was a little girl walking past the train depot and someone shouted down that President McKinley had been shot, 62 years earlier in 1901.

They let us out of school early that day. I remember riding my bike home and how bright the sun was and how the shadows of the trees stood out against the library on Warren Street. There’s something about the death of someone important that makes you appreciate being alive, I learned that day.

That’s pretty much the entirety of my memory of Nov. 22, 1963.

Just on an impulse I Googled Mr. Laux and found his obituary – he died only last year, August 2010, in Portland, Maine, of all places. He retired in 1972 and lived to be 91. He was responsible for kindergarten through fifth grade, I believe, and most grades had at least two sections, so he had to make that little speech a dozen or more times. That must have been a tough day.

It’s hard to believe that was 58 years ago now – who in fifth grade thinks they’ll ever be able to remember things that happened a half-century ago? That was why it was so impressive for that teacher to tell a story about 62 years earlier.

And now here I am passing along to you the story of a little girl walking past a train depot 120 years ago and hearing that the president had been shot. I wonder if that memory will be preserved again in another 58 years.