I once heard writer’s block described this way:
It’s not that you cannot think of anything to say, or that you have nothing to say, it is that you have so much to say your brain cannot decide where to begin. So it sits frozen, staring at a blank page, constipated with ideas and unable to bring those ideas and thoughts through in an organized fashion.
In other words, Mental Constipation.
The only cure I’ve found is to begin a free-association type game with myself. Get the flow going once again by unblocking the bottleneck in my mind. I begin jotting down random ideas and thoughts that come into my head and let them lead the way for their more cohesive sisters to finally break through.
Sometimes even that doesn’t work. Sometimes, like girls are prone to do, they all think they are the most important and fight to be seen first, effectively re-congesting the narrow passages between my mind and the paper.
This is where I stand today. Mind raging with ideas and thoughts and questions. Blog pages empty and void of any signs of the tumult inside me. It’s like watching the the tv show "Lost" with the sound off, fascinating in its visual chaos but ultimately incomprehensible to the viewer (not that the sound has helped much these days).
I have been studying for two exams; well, one in particular — on language and communication, particularly focusing on critical thinking/reading/writing and on writing essays. This exam is multiple choice. Another exam in late January will be all written essays and a fourth will be a research paper. Through all this studying I’ve discovered just how amateurish my own writing, and my thinking process during writing, is. Realizing how often I skipped the necessary steps of quality writing causes me to cringe, but its the constant conscious "need" to go through those steps now that has really locked me up mentally.
I find I want to write posts about a great many things, only to slam against mental constipation as I try to adopt better writing habits by incorporating the steps I’ve recently learned. Rather than releasing everything in a more orderly fashion, the steps seem to have brought all my ideas and thoughts to an abrupt halt, as if they’ve never seen a flight of stairs in their lives and are frightened to death of taking a hard tumble into the abyss below should they trip on their way down. No one seems to want to make her grand entrance as a post here, or anywhere – even my journals – for that matter, as they all are more accustomed to strutting their stuff down a runway rather than down a winding staircase. And no amount of free-form writing will coax them from their perches at the top of the stairs. Nor has it brought order to their desperate crowding. Each still pushes her way to the front and demands to be recognized as first and most important in the parade, even while steadfastly refusing to begin the parade.
This is what madness must look like from the inside.
From my idiosyncratic point of view, the “constipation” you describe is a sign of ideas that don’t trust their keeper. They’re afraid they’ll never see the light of day. In our judgmental culture it’s not a surprising state.
What I find works is to stop judging. Perhaps your writing seems amateur now, but how much have you written? 50 stories? 75? And how many words? Each of your ideas is competing for limited time in the limelight.
Most of my stories never saw the light of day. I wrote them because the idea seemed neat and putting it into fixed words was an interesting process. Early attempts were decidedly amateur. I had a hard time keepting a story going for more than a page.
The same was true for sand sculpture. Some days I’d get to the beach, make a pile of sand, and then this crowd of idea-horses would try to run from the barn I’d been keeping them in, every one breaking for the light and getting stuck. I learned to say “Hold on, guys. Take your turn. Not everyone will make it into this sculpture but I promise that there’ll be room in the next.
In the old days it was one sculpture, one idea. Then, for a time, it was many ideas awkwardly grafted into one physical piece that looked more like a collision than a sculpture (see the 1998 pages on my Web site). And then I gradually learned, through continuing to make sculptures, how to lead several ideas to work together in one piece, and all the horses learned to play together.
Writing is similar. You can put anything into a story and make it good, if you develop the skills. The only way I know of to develop skills is to write, no matter how bad you think it will be.
Turn off the judgment, Lu. It kills, just as surely as a sword to your heart. Just… write. Once you’ve learned not to judge instantly and throw it away, you can look at the writing and ask “Did this express what I wanted it to? If not, what DOES it express?” Maybe there’s an idea at the back of the pack that made a run for the roses, and is your real point. Writing tends to uncover new things… which may be another reason you’re stuck now.
You have interesting experiences that will add depth to anything you write. Loosen your dictatorial directorial hand and let those experiences run. They keep their exuberant passion but lose the desperation that now makes them so hard to work with. You’ll get to the point where you no longer need a sledgehammer. A feather’s touch here and there will guide the ideas and the words that carry them.
Very insightful, Larry. You know me too well. I do tend to judge all my ideas and thoughts, and find most of them wanting. It never occured to me that might be the problem… you gave me much to think about.