The Dull Predictability of Writer's Block

At the start of this week I sat down to write a poem about pencils. Not the most inspiring of subjects perhaps, but as they say, inspiration can be found anywhere just so long as you care to look. Why not look to the writer’s tool itself, sitting uncelebrated in my hand for so long. Surely that’s as worthy as a blade of grass? So I wrote my poem about pencils, letting it take me where it would. And then I sat there staring at it for a long, long time. This is what came out:

toward an end
the pencil blunts,
 
the poet’s
lamentation
 
softens, gets to grip
with how thick
lately
 
words don’t come
 
as sharp
as they did once,
at an announcement
 
of intent, arrival,
graphite crumbling;
 
it can be so hard
to even find the pencil
in the first place

I’d been trying to avoid it for several weeks, but the realisation then was obvious - I’m in a rut. Blocked harder than a U-bend on Boxing Day. Or, and this feels closer to the mark, essentially fatigued. It’s been difficult to come to terms with because as a rule I don’t really believe in writer’s block, the bogeyman crouching in every aspiring artist’s wardrobe. It’s much too easy to invoke as an excuse for laziness, procrastination, or just a straight up lack of ideas.

The problem is I still have plenty of ideas waiting to be worked out. However, for whatever reason, they keep on refusing to reveal themselves. The fog descends and inevitably I end up slamming shut the the notebook or laptop in despair. In the few instances where I do arrive at something complete, the result is always incoherent, or as in the above example, an exercise in self-critique. There’s only so much I can write about the inability to write and unfortunately that’s the only subject that seems to occupy my mind these days.

This week has been pretty hectic for me overall, hence my absence here on Steemit. Moreover, for the reasons outlined above, I’ve basically run out of things to post. I’d hoped that a week off would get me back into the proper headspace for writing again but that hasn’t happened. Supplies are running low, the workers are on strike, and now I’m resorting to awful trade union analogies just to keep this post afloat. It won’t do in the slightest.

Despite the many gaping holes in this platform which I’ve become aware of as the weeks go by (I’ve just caught up with @jerrybanfield’s latest meltdown - wow) I still want to remain a part of the community here. The struggling band of creators who actually make this place worth its bandwidth need supporting, and I want to keep providing that support in whatever small way I can, be it financially or otherwise. Part of me is also stubbornly refusing to accept that this blog will become yet another gravestone among the countless others who tried, exhausted themselves, shook their heads then moved on to pastures new. I’ve done it before and it’s only ever been a source of regret.

This type of block is not unfamiliar to me and will eventually fade, though perhaps not for weeks, or even months. In truth it has more to do with my mental state at this time and little to do with the technicalities of writing - this, in my experience, has remained more or less constant. Energy, confidence, and direction, on the other hand, often seem elusive. But I digress. I’m going to be uploading a few more ‘full length’ pieces I feel happy with, at which point this blog will go into low-intensity mode.

Ironically, it may actually result in me posting more often than I have since I first arrived here. The quality of the posts will, I hope, remain more or less the same, although they will be much shorter in length and scope. Micro-poems, photos, casual writes, and perhaps the odd rant here and there, rather than full length pieces. Whenever the fog lifts, and the bogeyman can be safely shepherded back into the depths of the wardrobe, I will return to my regular schedule. In the meantime, I look forward to catching up with everyone’s recent uploads and reading the many more still to come.

Thanks for bearing with me, and best wishes for the weekend ahead.

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