When The Well Is Dry

Sometimes it is hard to get the creative juices flowing - and sometimes, that's because there aren't any to flow.

I'm sure everyone I know who creates stuff has been here, has known this feeling - and I am right in that position right now. Lacking the wherewithal or the oomph or whatever you want to call it to commit words to paper.

One of the worst feelings is having that itch in your fingertips, knowing what you want, knowing that you want to put your ideas down on paper - but lacking the impetus, lacking the words perhaps. Maybe lacking the guts of the actual idea, just the vague shell that it is going to occupy when it ends up in situ.

I get this a lot.

Luckily enough, I'm not relying on the writing to pay my bills. I can only imagine how much more difficult it is to maintain the impetus and continue to produce decent work when on a deadline.

There's a lot going on in the world to distract us, good and bad. Movies, music, so on, so forth. The continuous barrage of greed and cronyism seeping out of our governing institutions. Many, many things that offer distracting alternatives to ramming our heads into the same creative brick wall.

So perhaps that is the answer. Go do something else for a while. It's a suggestion I offer to people - if suffering from serious writer's block or anything similar, just get up, take a walk, listen to some music, play some video games, cleanse the proverbial palate.

What happens when you sit down afterwards and you are still dry?

Well, that's when you start thinking about why you might be lacking. What things have impacted you recently? What's got you down, what's got you stressed? Could that be something you use? Something you can work into your art, or something you can rail against? A catalyst, one way or another?

Try something new? Try making something better, different? Try a total departure from your usual modus operandi, something - as Monty Python's Flying Circus says - completely different?

What if that doesn't work?

Then I suppose we're left with half a blog, and twice as many questions as usual.

But hey, there's worse places to be.

Sorry for the weak angle, folks. Normal service next week.

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Writer's Block Without Culture Shock

I have no idea what to write about.

This happens to me, with fair regularity - but quite often it is a temporary thing. It may or may not correspond to stuff going on in my life - stressed out, thoroughly depressed, working forever, that kind of thing. Sometimes, it just happens.

I've been trying to write something. Not something specific. ANYTHING. It just hasn't been happening. I've managed perhaps a dozen words. I'm dripped dry.

I just...have no idea.

Like, a big part of it is having no will to actually make the words appear. I want writing, but the doing of the thing is where I am failing.  Another problem - I'm finding it hard to focus on any one thing for longer than ten minutes at a time. It dances across a hundred topics an hour, never settling for long.

Writer's block.

Maybe it's the fact that I am stuck indoors - in my sleep I did something rubbish to my right knee, it's not holding my weight right now. It's getting better, a day at a time, but still - the only thing you want to do is go outside when it's the only thing you can't do.

Maybe it's the state of the world, and the politics affecting me, the people I care about, and everyone else. This country is stuck in limbo, with our health service slowly being carved away and the government doing nothing except trying to ignore the huge mistake it is apparently determined to keep making. The US has a gestapo separating children from parents and a constant attack on anything good or just. Paying any attention to the news is a depressing thing, even if it is a necessary thing a lot of the time - I can't bear the idea of being out of touch, of knowing why things are getting worse and who exactly is making those decisions.

Maybe it is just happening to me, as other things tend to do. My anxiety has good days and bad days. So does my depression. Maybe right now is just a bad day for my writing.

But as I said about going outside: the only thing you want to do is the one thing you can't.

I remember, once, heading out to have a blood test. On the way I passed by a grocers. I caught sight of some celery and I thought: "Mmm, I could just go for some celery."

I really don't like celery much. I just knew I couldn't have it, because I had to fast for fourteen hours before the blood test. The moment I left the surgery, thoughts of celery would vanish - I would want something serious and substantial to eat.

I just couldn't have it, so I wanted it.

So here I am. Sat here in front of a screen, trying to will the whatever in my brain onto the text box.

For something.

Anything.

I guess this will do.