How to deal with my writers block?
Looking back on my life, reflecting. Changing my perspective from a near future that holds next to nothing due to the pandemic, to the past, where memories linger. In my Facebook account that I do not use anymore, I find this writing in the memory tab
From my diary written in 2019
I am nervous. This morning sitting at Ayala Terraces for breakfast I almost doubted the decision to leave, almost, like a flash the feeling slipped through the daily routine of my morning coffee. it was gone before I even realized it, I had to look back to recapture the split second. realizing that it was a false sentiment. A residue of two years ago, thinking I would build a new future and grow old in this country.
A faint memory of old days. That will grow fainter and fainter until it is an almost forgotten memory, hiding quietly behind the pages of my old diaries.
I hope the future will inspire me to more creative writings, for I feel like a desert in a sandstorm. There are words, but the ground is barren, there are sentences but none fits and stick around too long to blossom. There are stories, hidden deep down under the sand and swirling in the sandstorm like ghosts from the past.
I have to write…..I have to, otherwise, my heart will burst and my brain will blow up. But before I can do that I have to find the key to the door to my dreams. For there are no dreams at night……..
Ah…..well, this is a start. This is called intuitive writing, I love doing it, you just start writing and see if that door in your mind opens and gives you more than sour lemons to rap about.
Today the door opened a little…….may it open wide on my next location and may the word flow be fast, hilarious, endless, moving, progressive and fluid.
How ironic!!! At the moment I actually live in a desert. in a small desert village in Baja California Sur. How your life can change in merely 3 years?!
I guess the lack of words can be categorized as a writers-block by now, for I traveled through China, to Italy and part of northern Europe to end in the Riviera Maya in Mexico, traveled 10.000km through Mexico on a motorcycle and there still are no words.
I write articles, but I do not do any creative writing. And the book I once started is hidden on the laptop to stop frustrating me.
How do I deal with my writer block?
I have no clue, I searched the internet and found these 10 steps:
- Determine the root, what is causing your blockade?
- Rethink your inspiration to want to write a book, was it a book, a writer?
- Build a solid routine (I have a routine alright, but nothing more frustrating than a blank page staring at you!)
- Start with a draft and work from the draft (What to put in the draft?? And by the way, I have a draft……)
- Look at your writing, your project from another perspective (Done that…..maybe that is when the block began?)
- Start in the middle (my draft starts in the middle……..)
- Optimize your surroundings………..(yeah, well, kind of blank stare here……I traveled halfway across the world and still nothing!)
- Write something else (Daily business so how come it doesn’t help me?)
- Stop trying (That is all I am doing!)
- Accept that writing is hard
But you can also find 14 tricks, 27 ways, etc. If I follow these 10 steps to deal with a writers’ block I get stuck at number one, I tried to shuffle the steps, but it doesn’t matter, it is here and it won’t go away just yet. And I can frustrate myself over it but that will not add any positivity to my day. And there is nothing you can do, to force writing will block even harder. So I lean into it, accept it, I try to relax. Maybe that is number 10? Accepting that writing is hard?
It is not my experience that writing is hard, I remember days when words just came, day and night. I would write constantly without any lack of words that would easily form sentences that would easily form poetry, stories.
Now I scribble bits and pieces here and there, creative outbursts of a split second, I water them in the hope.
I guess I am stuck with it for a while. I just better accept that.
