Writer's Block

Sitting down every morning in front of the computer, I move the mouse and the cursor clicks almost involuntarily on the Internet Explorer icon, rather than the Windows Explorer icon. Almost involuntarily, because it is, in fact, quite deliberate. I don't want to write, I'll read anything instead. Whether it's some starlet's new wardrobe malfunction, or the current revolutionary upheaval in the Middle East, or a new recipe that I tell myself I will try out soon - all this reading is just an excuse for me to avoid writing.

Having completed and submitted one manuscript, and now a hundred pages into the second, writer's block has struck in a terrible and paralysing blow. In its grip, I read about the commercial success of the Mommy blogger brigade, and tell myself that that's what I need to do. To break out of my current state I have to offer up more of my inner life. Maybe the thought of being able to single-handedly fund my children's college accounts will spur me onto writing more and completing this second manuscript. But, I already don't like this option. Although a creature of the era of mass communication, and completely embracing its technology, I am at best a cautious participant in the culture it has spawned, except in unavoidable ways through the cookies that websites install on my computer and through the terms I leave behind on search engines. I want to use the tools of my times, not be shaped by them (although that is not wholly possible, I understand).

I am not a confessional sort of person. I realized that neither is my son. In his elementary school, the local police department offers a prize for the best essay on alcohol and drugs and the harm they cause. Awareness-raising, early education and all that. S. wrote a great essay on the dangers of tobacco and alcohol advertising. When the best essays were read out, I discovered a common theme: all of them touched on either a family member or a close friend whose early death or substance-abuse had deeply affected the young essay-writer. Not that the essays were not good or powerful, but the judges went for the ones where the writers had offered themselves and their families up for evaluation. Perhaps this is a sign of the times? We like to read blogs where people write about themselves, watch TV shows where people reveal themselves (literally and metaphorically), and love to hear other people discuss their personal lives in agony aunt columns (I do, anyway, but that's the subject of another novel). When it comes to expression though, my son, like me, tends to draw on other sources of ideas, write about everything else except his family, unless he is asked specific questions.

So there remains the question of the writer's block. What to do, what to do? Well, they do say that writing through it, like working one's way through pain, is the way to go. And that's what this post has been about.