It’s only fitting that while writing a piece about the creative process and writer’s block, the author should be stricken with a case of the latter. The worst in ages. I’ve been fucking with this column backward and forward for the past month, and I can’t seem to get it moving. Then, finally, at 1 a.m. while pushing a lighting truss through a four-story parking structure at work, something clicked.
Some believe writer’s block isn’t real, that it can be worked through and creativity, in a sense, forced, but one can’t always be inspired. For me, it has to be forced or no shit would get done. Because I’m at war with myself, I’m often not motivated to do anything at all and must take conscious steps to counteract the mindset. Take, for instance, this column. I sat down to work on it most every night this month, and 98 percent of the time, I felt I had nothing, nothing to say about a subject I knew very well, and I would be better to just give up and stick to unloading trucks because the well has run dry. I wrote three different versions from three different angles, and not one spoke to me; all the while, the specters of hopelessness and deadline stress were breathing down my neck.
But I just keep coming back to it because I refuse to lose to the ruse.
If I sit and wait for a spark of inspiration to hit me, I could be waiting for a very long time . . . days, months, years. Not that it can’t happen, but time is in short supply these days. In fact, it’s the most valuable thing I have in my life—above money, possessions, prestige or power. It’s personal. It’s love. And if the ideas won’t spill forth, I will be working daily on writing garbage and making mistakes. Then, in the face of my anxiety, I’ll work on producing anyway. It’s good practice.
There are those who are able to channel their thoughts and open the flood gates without the self-conscious constraints some of us suffer. The people I know like that have spent many years pushing through the levels of resistance. It comes easier to them because they are able to recognize the mental blocks and don’t buy into them.
When I hear the phrase “the song just wrote itself,” I’m always intrigued. How the hell does that happen? I sometimes ask friends in bands about their music; I notice that the songs I like most are usually the ones they say they put little to no effort into writing. They were afterthoughts. And from what I hear, that would seem to be the case with a lot of “hit” songs by classic bands as well. “Oh, we were going to leave that one off the record,” they’ll say, “and at the last minute, we decided to put it on anyway.”
So maybe I try too hard. Oh, well—it’ll get easier someday. Maybe.
It’s not like I think anyone gives a toss about my music, but it’s important to me to write exactly what I want to hear or as close to it as I can get. I’ll pound out a few lines or riffs, then assassinate myself for hours, sometimes days with multiple variations on a theme until, more often than not, I settle on the original idea.
It’s combat, friends—the heart vs. the mind—and it can be crippling. Many a famous writer has suffered monumental bouts of writer’s block; a quick Google search will bring up dozens of lists. And the reasons are as varied as the writing styles: stress, depression, distraction, alcoholism, fame, boredom.
I just try to remember the battle is in my head and not my hands, and it will eventually pass.
Music, film, painting, dance, vision—I’m in awe of the creation process. And I’ll never get over the excitement of witnessing new ideas realized. I prefer it in front of an unsuspecting audience, brought forth and dumped in our laps as if it were obvious all along. But I know it wasn’t. It’s revolution. The best ideas are simple, yet often born of frustration, the need to say what’s not being said or hear what’s not being heard.
