Writers Block

I was asked recently about writers block - something I don't believe in. It's always been linked, in my mind, to the notion of writers as airy fairy artistes wafting around in a delicate nervous state waiting to be snuggled into submission by inspiration. I believe instead in the notion of writers as workers, crafters, drafters... a carpenter doesn't get carpenters block, stand with saw in hand in front of a kitchen unit and weep 'I just can't Majorie, I just can't... maybe tomorrow it will come to me...'

But - some pieces of writing are more challenging than others, some times its harder than usual to juggle writing with life. Or you just become tired and burnt out trying- the life of an emerging writer can be full of rejections. The answer may be to write a little less, and live a little more for a while. Or to write from a different angle or pov. Or to write in a different form, a poem, a play, a monologue, a flash - but the answer is never, in my case anyway, to stop writing. Writing will give you more writing.  Free writing is a practise that can work really well.... if you're feeling stuck, give it a try :)

 You just do it. Pick up the pen. Go. And you time yourself. You do writing practice. Don’t cross out. Trust your own mind, be specific—not car, but Cadillac. Lose control. Say what you really want to say, not what you think you should say. We mostly live in discursive thinking, but in writing practice, if you keep your hand moving, you eventually settle below discursive thinking to wild mind, the place where you really see, think, and feel. That’s the place you want to get to in order to write.

Natalie Goldberg

Beginning A Novel...

I'm starting into the process of beginning a new novel. This doesn't involve a laptop, just selecting a nice fat note book to fill with ideas, free writing, drawings and images. In a process similar to the one Nathalie Goldberg calls 'composting' I begin to gather material without any pressure to define the theme or subject. At this stage I have the vaguest of notions - like I want this to be a white book, it will feature the Internet and Emily Dickinson and a disappearance - or it may not, this is a stage where nothing gets ruled out.

How do you go about beginning a new piece of writing?

Some authors have very particular rituals and ceremonies. Isabel Allende for instance always begins her books on January 8th. She has done this since 1981 when she received a phone call to let her know that her grandfather was dying. The letter she wrote to him that day became her first novel, The House Of Spirits. "It was such a lucky book from the very beginning, that I kept that date to start."

This is what she has to say about her process -

"That day, January 8th, which is a sacred day for me, I come to my office very early in the morning, alone. I light some candles for the spirits and the muses. I meditate for a while. I always have fresh flowers and incense. And I open myself completely to this experience that begins in that moment. I never know exactly what I'm going to write. I may have finished a book months before and may have been planning something, but it has happened already twice that when I sit down at the computer and turn it on, another thing comes out. It is as if I was pregnant with something, an elephant's pregnancy, something that has been there for a very long time, growing, and then when I am able to relax completely and open myself to the writing, then the real book comes out. I try to write the first sentence in a state of trance, as if somebody else was writing it through me. That first sentence usually determines the whole book. It's a door that opens into an unknown territory that I have to explore with my characters. And slowly as I write, the story seems to unfold itself, in spite of me. It just happens."

How do you begin a new project? With flowers and incense or just a new e drive and a whiskey?

Have a good weekend!: