I suppose if I’m to document my writing journey, from the larval stages onward, I really ought to begin at the beginning…
First of all, ten years of writer’s block. Ten years. From the age of twenty to thirty, and if we’re talking about actually finishing a piece of writing, then longer still. I won a short story competition at fourteen years of age and had been resting on my laurels ever since. If it weren’t for certain events, this state of affairs could have easily lasted the rest of my life.
So here’s an account of all the non-productive and sometimes outlandish ways I tried to get over my writer’s block, and the story of how I finally succeeded.
Colder porridge
Obviously, my writer’s block was merely an ergonomic problem. A wholly external problem. I just didn’t have the right environment, one where I could work distraction-free. The correct software even—perhaps if I downloaded Scrivener? My swivel chair was too squishy, or maybe it wasn’t squishy enough. Perhaps what I really needed was a fountain pen. Or writing gloves—do they make those? Goodness, they do.
This porridge is too hot, and that porridge is too cold. I can’t possibly work under these conditions! (Which conditions precisely these were I never did determine.)
Staring into the abyss
There is nothing more terrifying. You gaze into the abyss and it gazes back, and it finds you sorely lacking. And by the abyss, I mean the blank page. The pitiless blue-white glow of your computer monitor opened to an empty Word document. Never look directly at it.
I’ve learnt that you have to write something, anything to get the ball rolling. The first thing I wrote after overcoming my writer’s block was, ‘Is there nothing but a dull buzzing in my head?’ I saved that file, then I cried. And the next day I sat down and did it all over again. That line didn’t end up being the start of a story, but it was the start of something.
Renting a prison cell
Can the heart soar freely if the body is free to roam? Probably. Still, it didn’t stop me from thinking that renting a prison cell at the Old Melbourne Gaol was the solution to all of my problems.
From a literary perspective, incarceration did Oscar Wilde well; it worked wonders for the father of the protagonist of I Capture the Castle. If it worked for a 19th Century playwright and a fictional early 20th Century author then surely it would work for me. Iron bars to match my ironclad logic.
During the tour of my prospective new ‘creative space’ my Writers’ Society of Victoria guide informed me it was in fact a holding cell intended for two prisoners rather than one of the single-occupancy cells. Strike one—way too roomy. How was I supposed to suffer for my art in a cell larger than my student apartment back in Kyoto?
She unlocked the door to reveal—I’m not even sure this part is real, maybe the story’s been embellished in the nightmares which followed— a carpeted floor. Scratchy, grey office carpet. Cream coloured walls. A yellow polyvinyl desk. Harsh bright lighting. And no ventilation whatsoever. Strike two, three, four… the whole box of matches and the entire baseball game. It was small, it was ugly. But alas, not romantically so. The air wasn’t so much a miasma evocative of a bygone era as a fetid biosecurity risk.
Dark magic
Ha. Kidding. I wasn’t so desperate I’d resort to Faustian bargains just yet. (I figured as a writer your inner demons ought to be enough.)
Waiting for inspiration to strike
For years, I twiddled my thumbs and patiently waited for my muse to show up. For that brilliant, golden ticket idea. However, in reality, the act of writing comes first and the ideas follow. Now that I write, I can hardly keep up with all my brainwaves. Much like God helps those who help themselves, ideas only grace writers who are diligently bent over their work, scribbling away with a furrowed brow.
Leeches
Haha. Got you again.
Not reading
I was a voracious reader as a child, several books a week. I’m not quite sure what happened, joining the legions of what I like to call the “Working Dead” most likely, but it got to the stage where I was reading that many books a year. Trying to write when one has ceased to be a reader is like trying to dance whilst abstaining from music.
Not writing
I took ‘not reading’ a step further and simply Did. Not. Write. Oh, I’d do the tangential stuff, I’d read about writing, talk about writing, even attend workshops and drop out the week it was my turn to share my (non-existent) work. But actually writing something? Unthinkable.
Nootropics
No, but there’s an idea…
How I overcame writer’s block, once and for all
…and won the Booker Prize! Just kidding. One day—just you wait. And subscribe:
Sometimes it takes meeting a person, an average person, no older than yourself and in no way more remarkable, who is pursuing your dream. You don’t think, ‘If he can do it, why can’t I?’ so much as ‘If he’s doing it then why the hell aren’t I?’
The seeds of envy sowed, the dissatisfaction of not pursuing your creative ambitions starts to rankle. And my, how it stings and smarts. After a decade of office work, your capacity for this sort of spiritual pain takes you by surprise. You’d half-hoped you truly had become an empty husk of a person, ground down to a stub, the whole of you a burnt off nerve, incapable of even lamenting the fact. Not so. I found myself transitioning from the Pink Floydian state of ‘comfortably numb’ to my new state of ‘quiet desperation’.
My erstwhile friend also got me back into reading through trading books. One of the books he lent me was The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I don’t have a copy—no sooner had I bought one than I was down at the post office, scribbling a message in it and posting it to a friend in London. If I buy another copy, I’ll probably just end up gifting it too.
The amazing thing is that I didn’t even read the whole thing before handing it back. Just two pages of The War of Art were enough to change my life. One gave a name to the enemy—the self-inflicted sickness, the restless, the low-grade constant misery — all kept alive by inaction and an inexhaustible fount of excuses. Resistance. I recognised it at once and realised continuing on the way I had been was untenable. The second life-changing page was on the need to be a professional and not just an artist, to treat writing as work. Work you show up and do regardless of your mood.
The first short story I attempted and gave up on was atrocious. Truly terrible. Writing it felt like a steam engine started up after a century of rest, grinding and giving off smoke. The next short story I wrote was much better, full of amateurish mistakes and rife with darlings in need of merciless dispatching, but also potential.
Now, I’m sorry to have led you up the garden path a little. It’s the same disappointment that accompanies weight-loss advice that boils down to a good diet and plenty of exercise. But that’s all there is to it. You sit down, you write down at least one sentence, even if it’s the sort of drivel that makes you hate yourself (what Anne Lamott terms the ‘shitty first draft’ and some call the ‘vomit draft’). And tomorrow, you do it all over again.
Thanks for reading Writing Foetus; a new issue out every Friday.