Send in the clones
Now that spring is upon us, and the trees are beginning to leaf out and grow, my life has become a lot more hectic. Such is the row a forester has to hoe, but I’m busy planting trees, measuring trees, I’ve got three logging operations running at the moment, so on and so forth. I’ve been reading my usual three or four books a week. I’ve been keeping up-to-date on political movements, health care reform, cap-n-tax, the TEA Parties, you know, all the headlines that fill our days.
However, I find that I want to write about something and I can’t think up a topic.
Of course, I can easily pop in and make comments on conversations and articles here and on the other websites where I post, but I can’t seem to come up with any ideas for a longer, more refined piece such as what WFTC tries to provide for our readers. I don’t want to discuss the current debacle in DC right now, it’s too depressing and I think that just about every position a person can have on health care reform has already been hashed and rehashed over and over again. I don’t want to discuss work, nature, child rearing, or any of the other activities and ideas that consume my days.
But I still feel the urge to write.
I just have a sense of unease, of urgency, of the need to put something intelligent down in word form (if I have ever accomplished such a thing even when I’ve been in touch with my muse). I just can’t find anything worthy of the site.
It’s been bugging me for a week or two now. I spent a couple of hours here Saturday evening after the kid went to sleep, thinking, staring at the word editor, occasionally writing some half formed, embryonic, not-quite-a-clone kind of paragraph about the usual BS that just made me grind my teeth and delete it after the first read. If there is one thing I do NOT want to be as a writer, it’s one of those writers that give us the same thing, over and over and over, never deviating from popular/populist thought. While I may hit the same topics on occasion, I don’t want to be the Sean Hannity of the writing world.
It’s really upsetting me. I’ve never had this problem before. I got used to cranking out 5-10 pages papers every night while I was in grad school and it’s almost reflexive at times. Not being able to fill a page with anything of consequence (well, of consequence to me) is annoying. It’s like feeling a tick crawling up the inside of your leg, or getting that one damn gnat out of the whole godforsaken swarm which decides that, with all of Creation in which he could roam, he MUST be right inside your ear.
I feel like Charlie Brown kicking the football with Lucy. I have a million ideas running through my head, from the year’s first encounter with a rattlesnake to a discussion I had with an old Marxist I know about whether or not human nature exists, but as soon as I articulate the idea, it’s like Lucy snatches the football away and I go sprawling on my back with a giant ARRRGGGHHHH!, to lay spread eagle in the dirt of my own maladroitness.
Do any of you ever feel the same? There are so many other writers here that have been writing for years, have been trained, or teach, in the literary arts, I can’t imagine that no one here has had the same feeling, and the accompanying irritation at your inability to scratch that particular itch. What do the pros have to say about the topic? What are the causes of “writer’s block”, if that’s what I’m dealing with? How does one go about getting past that?
Some of you do this stuff for money. There have got to be methods, exercises, something more productive than me just staring at the screen for hours. I’d imagine that deadlines would be impossible to meet consistently if there weren’t.
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Cliff Pickover’s books usually do a good job of kick-starting my creative urges. This one is particularly inspiring to me:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1890572179/?tag=wfthecoliseum-20
And then there’s always Kim Jong-Il looking at stuff:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/on_the_spot_with_kim_jong-il.html
Is it any wonder why NK is a failed state?
See the variety of products he’s inspecting? There is no way one man, no matter how intelligent, could know everything there is to know about the pork industry, the fishing industry, the cotton industry, the textile industry, the steel industry, etc, and yet this little fella gets to call all of the shots in each and every field.
One strategy is to free-write. Some suggest this works best with pen and paper, without the distractions of a computer. All you do is write. If you have a vague idea of a topic, start with that. If you are blocked and have no topic, then you may write “I don’t know what to write about.” The only rule is you must keep writing — the pen must be moving at all times. No time to think, or to worry if it’s bad or good. Thinking or stopping is not allowed. Just write. Force yourself to go for 10 minutes straight. You might find that once you are writing, interesting things appear on the page, or an idea emerges that you can develop into something. Because you’re free-writing and maybe writing nonsense like “I have no idea what to write,” you can give yourself permission to write badly — there is no deleting or stopping just because it isn’t good, and there is no fixing sentences as you go. Forward motion is the only goal. The idea behind this is that the act of writing gets you thinking on a different level and might help break through to something you want to write about.
Another strategy is to change your pattern. Do something you wouldn’t normally do. If you never watch TV sitcoms, watch one and then follow it up by free-writing about it. Try listening to a style of music you never listen to and then free-write. Go to a big shopping mall and bring a notepad. Go anywhere and pay attention to some minute detail that catches your attention. Watch birds, ants, people working at a restaurant. Really observe something that you usually would not even look at for more than a second, and then free-write. Try to avoid imposing an interpretation on what you see that fits an ideology. Consider completely tuning out politics and current events for a full day — no news or politics of any kind.
Another strategy is to give yourself a specific writing assigment, maybe a deadline. “I am going to review a movie this week.” “I am going to tell the story of how I broke my arm when I was six.”
Another strategy is to write from a different point of view. Try telling the story of the rattlesnake encounter from the perspective of the snake. It might end up not working as a finished piece, but trying to see things from a different perspective can get you writing.
@ Scott
One day, I was laying there on the ground, soaking up some sun, my back to my favorite log. Next thing I know, Wham! This fat asshole sets his size fifteen right on my back…
lol
Thanks for the advice.
@ Mike
You might want to give Twitter a shot. In some ways, it’s a lot like the free-writing process Scott mentions. Plus, the 140-character limit forces you to write economically.
I deposit all sorts of nonsensical, vapid garbage on there without much filtering of my thoughts. But every once in awhile a gem emerges that sparks an idea.
I’d suggest picking something external to yourself which has its own set of formal rules and writing about it- try a different style or genre. Like Scott says- maybe a movie review, or perhaps true crime.
Years ago I read a book that suggested writing the very moment you woke up- just putting pen to paper and letting it flow. Some weird stuff will turn up I guarantee you, and it has the effect of loosening the more conscious parts of you.
@ Daniel
I get up at 5:30 AM to get the kid on the bus by 6:10 AM. I’m certainly not capable of writing immediately upon waking.
Thanks for the suggestion, but time is mostly limited to 9 PM until about 11 PM, after the kid is asleep and before I hit the hay myself.
@ Mr. Cade:
I’d be tweeting myself and that just sounds freaky deaky.
@Mike
You might be tweeting yourself — which does sound freaky and perhaps sexually deviant — but you’d be surprised at the following it eventually generates. I mean, somehow, 420 people decided it would be prudent to “follow” my Twitter account. Who are these poor souls?
Looks like the kid is just going to have to make it to the bus solo…
@ Daniel K.
That sounds like the first step down the long, dark path to getting featured in one of Scott’s PWSBKTW columns.
@Mike
Just thought of a good one.
Set a Google alert for “call for submissions” or something such. You’ll soon receive tons of alerts for magazines, newspapers, webzines, etc that are seeking articles of all kinds.
Some of the gigs will pay, some won’t. Still, though, it’s a win-win because anything you submit that doesn’t make it to publication is something you can use as a blog post here or somewhere else. Plus, the exercise gives you an “assignment” (and usually a deadline), and that helps guide the process.