Hokay. So, I don't want this space to turn into a gripe-fest. Practically, based on my last two posts, it has. Ultimately, though, the idea is less about whining and more about writing. Let's talk a little about block, stakes, and why I have always been secretly attracted to Dean Young.
Writer's block, the antithesis of inspiration. A writer sits down, knows she wants to write, but cannot, or actually does write but hates the end product. A few things can cause this.
1) One that I'm aware of is pressure. Another is judgement. Pressure is the urge to create. Judgment is the urge to create something brilliant. Both can be paralyzing. Combined, pressuring yourself to write something brilliant actually impedes the creation of said brilliance. You're always second guessing, judging your language even before sentences, images, ideas, any of it is fully formulated. And probably what you've got isn't half as bad as you're making it out to be. This is why writers talk with each other about what they've written all the time. Also, we're narcissists.
The superego interferes. I prefer to write through the Id.
I have no idea how professional deadline guys write anything at all. But then, when I was working at a student newspaper, a deadline was sometimes the only thing that would make me write. Odd. I guess this was different. I was writing for a check. Cranking out copy. As opposed to trying to write literature, or produce something a little deeper and more moving than, "The city of Kirksville is considering lifting the capacity for local curbside garbage disposal." (The first sentence in that Kirksville link is in bold because it's a lie. Glad they've finally started cluing us into these things.)
2) A friend recently reminded me that part of creating awesome things is the initial act of vomiting. It's all vom when it first hits the page, misdirected, not really sure what it is yet (or was), scattered, a bit disturbing if it's done right. So there's one way to get over block. Stop resisting. Induce a purge of the ideas you don't want to write about but are insisting that you do, the ideas you want to avoid yet present themselves and keep coming back up when you sit down to write.
I think I have a depression essay burbling inside my brainpan. I usually hate writing about that, even to the one-person audience of myself, but I think that, considering my history with this word and its dark shifty weighty referent, maybe I could add something to the larger conversation. Maybe. Perhaps this is the narcissist talking. It's certainly the writer.
3) Block. I find myself most unblocked when I'm willing to grab a pen or saddle up at a keyboard and just see what happens. Explore the capital-U Unknown. Thank you Dean Young and your Art of Recklessness.
Quote: "Your genius is your error."
Here, a rather adept review of this marvelous piece of authorial liberation.
Excerpt:
"The Art of Recklessness is more about joy and empathy and imagination—about why we write in the first place. It doesn’t champion a style of poetry as much as a spirit. It is an invitation—issued via DADA, André Breton, Wordsworth, Hamlet, second graders, and Whitman—to invention, exuberance, and risk-taking."
So if you're blocked, as I have been, consider lowering the stakes of the writerly act. A past guru of mine, when discussing block in class, remarked "Hey, guys, it's just poetry. The stakes are so low." I carry that one around with me and procure it from my depths whenever I feel blocked enough.
The kind of block I've been feeling has been fueled by an artistic insecurity the likes of which I've met before, and remedied before by changing styles drastically. This one's different. It's bigger. Rattling the foundations and motivations and such instead of simply stylistic concerns. I miss the Muse. I may be changing genres.
I cannot abandon you, Mr. Dean Young, almost because I think you'd want me to if I entertained the idea (an interesting turn of phrase, that) and I am a spiteful ex, but really because you were my first, the first poetic voice (what is that, anyway?) that I ever really enjoyed. And so I ate you, first large, gaping bites, tone, image sets, red herrings, following an idea down its wormhole, then nibbles, the ending, the subject, intentional illogic that leads toward meaning, clown shoes eagle claw fist.
I stole from you, unabashedly.
Or so I thought.
Turns out Deano was stealing from everyone else already, like most authors. So I'm on the right track.
4) Another way to remedy block, I've found, is to read more, and read different. New authors. I suddenly have an affinity for Louise Gluck, and her strange ability to charge the domestic sphere with levels of discomfort I never anticipated finding there anymore than the usual levels of discomfort. And Pablo Neruda, who I think is Dean Young with a bit more self-control but the same taste for surprise. What a notary! What an ear! And Csezlaw Milosz, whose eye for image, much like Gluck's, kicks ass. (I'd post a link, but I'm always drunk and at Uptown Billiards when I read Milosz, and you know how that goes, if you can remember, which I usually don't.)
These folks are masters. It's intimidating.
It's just poetry. The stakes are where you place them.
J
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