Elaine Smith Writes

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Tag Archives: Writer’s Block

The best cures for depression

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
~Dodie Smith

A little quote, there, from today’s Friday Find, a lovely little book called I Capture the Castle. by Dodie Smith.  You may have heard of Smith’s more famous work:  One Hundred and One Dalmations, boasting one of Disney’s most aptly named villains, Cruella de Vil.

The fact that Dodie Smith’s last name is the same as my own is purely coincidental—although I must say it gives me half an idea for a theme for my Sunday posts.  What say you to Smith Sundays?  In which we investigate famous people named Smith?  I don’t know.  I’ll have to think about that.

Anyway…I Capture the Castle is a quirky sort of coming-of-age novel about Cassandra Mortmain  (Isn’t that a great name?)  and her family.  Her father is a once-famous and now-blocked writer, her stepmother is the overly-dramatic but not at all wicked Topaz, her elder sister is tired of the life of poverty in spite of the fact that the family really does live in the eponymous castle.  There’s a younger brother and a family friend rounding out the household—all of whom have their lives up-ended when wealthy American brothers inherit the nearby Scoatney Hall.

It’s hard to do the book justice in a description.

Perhaps it will help if I tell you that the first sentence of the book is “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”  (I’m a sucker for intriguing first lines.)  Or that J. K. Rowling lists it on her website as one of her favorite books.

Book recommendations are hard.  Fiction, especially.  One person’s treasured tome is another person’s snooze-fest.

But I Capture the Castle has a lot to recommend it:  multi-dimensional characters, a narrator with an original turn of phrase, a surprisingly involved exploration of the psychology behind writer’s block, plot twists, suspense.

Find it.  It’s worth a read, I think.

No fish in the driveway

Nuthin’

I got nuthin’.

No internal inspiration.  No gifts of the gods dropping from the sky like that fish yesterday.

This is what happens sometimes.  You want to write, and nothing comes.

Writers Block.

That big, scary phrase that, in itself, stops all further forward motion and provides the excuse for it.

I can’t write.  I have Writer’s Block.

The thing is. . .there’s no such thing.  I mean, it’s nothing endemic to writers.  It’s a plain old combination of laziness and fear.  Sometimes, with exhaustion and/or addictions added to the mix.  (I don’t necessarily mean the more popular forms of substance abuse when I say “addiction.”  You can be addicted to television—or cupcakes.)

If you aren’t writing—well, we’ll say if I’m not writing—no need to make sweeping generalizations about the rest of you—but, if I’m not writing, it’s a good bet it’s because I don’t feel like it.

I’m too tired, too distracted by other things, too frightened I won’t have a good idea or be able to do justice to the ones I have.

The answer to all of that is:

So what?

So what if I wake up at 5 am after staying up until 2?  So what if I’m worried about the mortgage, the contract, the fight with my spouse or my mother, or the funny noise the car is making?

So what?

There’s a line from a song in A Chorus Line:

God, I’m a dancer.  A dancer dances.

It’s kind of the same thing.

A writer writes.

So, be a Nike commercial.  Just do it.  Or, as Julia Cameron says, show up at the page.

Are you a writer? A writer writes.

And, in case you hadn’t noticed, today, once again, I get to say I’m a writer.  The triumph of “So what?” over “I don’t feel like it.”

This may be the most important blog post I’ve ever written.

So far.

 

Blank page, blank mind

“White…a blank page or canvas…so many possibilities.”*

I’ve been thinking about writer’s block.  I saw an interview with Fran Lebowitz in which I learned that after publishing two collections of essays, the last one in 1981, she has had writer’s block ever since.

1981.

32 years ago.

That’s a long time.

Not quite as long as Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960–but, let’s face it–if you wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, why wouldn’t you have writer’s block?  For one thing, if you wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, why would you ever need to write anything else?  And for another, why wouldn’t you be terrified that nothing else you wrote would ever measure up?  (To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book in the whole world.  Can you tell?)

Ms. Lebowitz, asked about why she wasn’t writing, said “I don’t know.  If I knew, I’d be writing.”  She went on, however, to say, “Writing is work” and described herself as lazy.

Writing is work.

That’s certainly one reason I’m not writing when I’m not writing.

Let’s set aside the question of how Ms. Lebowitz has been making a living since 1981.  Does she really get paid a sufficient wage to go on talk shows and be witty?  She is witty as hell but really?  Where can I get that gig?  (For that matter, where can I get that wit?)

Writing is work.

It doesn’t seem like work to a person digging ditches, I suspect, but it is work.

The thing is. . .what makes it such hard work?  That’s what I’m trying to understand.  (The theory being that, like Ms. Lebowitz, if I knew why I’m not writing, I’d be writing.  In reality, of course, if I can spend enough time thinking about why I’m not writing, I don’t have to actually write.  See?  A perfect system.)

One thing that makes it hard is thinking up something to write.

People speak of the “terror of the blank page,” and I used to think they were terrified at having to fill up that page.  Now, I don’t think it’s fear of the volume of words needed to fill the page.  I think it’s the fear that you won’t think of the first word.

It turns out, for me, that writing isn’t so hard.  (It’s not easy–and I usually want to take a nap when I’m done–but it’s not like digging ditches).  Coming up with something to get me started, however, is the killer.

That blank page has so many possibilities.  Is it really the case that, with a universe from which to draw inspiration, I can’t think of one thing to put down on paper?  Or is it that choosing one closes off all the others?

If the latter, writing this blog is certainly one antidote. Clearly, writing about one thing today leaves me with all the universe still available tomorrow.

It also leaves me with a host of tomorrows to continue to explore whatever I chose today.  And this topic seems interesting.  To me, at least.  I think I’ll stick a pin in it for now and come back to it in some future post.

Meanwhile, let’s just put something down on that blank page.

 

* Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George


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