Writers Block. Arrrrggggh!

In my recent struggles with writer's block, I’ve occasionally thought of blogging about it - while lying in bed unable to get up. So when Shelby Meyerhoff of Looking For Faith pointed me to a post about it on Facilitating Paradox, I thought, “Now’s the time.” … Either that or leave an annoyingly long comment on the other blog.

When I was 30 years younger, I smugly (and often) declared, "Inspiration comes to those who work" - 'cause I found that if I went in the studio (sculpture) every day, I never ran out of ideas. In fact I always had more ideas crowding my brain than I could possibly carry out. But if I sat around waiting for the days I felt inspired before working, my creative energy dried up.

Would I have eventually hit artist's block if I hadn't switched first to science and then to writing? Don't know. (BTW, I eventually went back to sculpture - though it's up and down. Some years I let myself have 4-8 hours a day at it. Some years only a few hours a week - which is not enough to fire any kind of inspiration).

However, I've been in bad writer's block (on my monasticism book) since mid-summer. I still have lots of ideas yammering in my head, I just can't seem to drag the words out at the keyboard. When I try, it feels like a slog through waist deep mud... frozen mud. Neck deep.

So I guess my youthful insight still holds... I don't work and I don't feel that inspired energy pulling me forward... and it is so exhausting otherwise - like pushing a freight train from behind.

But I still have ideas... And get inspired about work other than what I am *supposed* to be doing.

Which is where blogging came in.

The thing is, when writing my book was first blocked last summer, my blog took off. I may not have been writing what I supposed to write, but it still felt like work. And it was really good to connect with others via the blogosphere.

(O.K., here is another, irrelevant, personal tidbit. I started computing in the days of card punching. Yes, I punched cards. Then fed JCL to a mainframe in the days before personal computers. In fact, I wrote my Master's thesis using JCL on a mainframe (80 characters to a line, etc.). I liked the mainframe/terminal set-up because of the community feel - whether at a terminal in a large, buzzing computer room, or in my own department - a university department was very proud if it had it's own terminal to the mainframe in some closet-sized room. I disliked personal computers - they were entirely disconnected then. So I have savored various reconnections - first email, then internet newsgroups, now blogs.)

Then a few weeks ago ALL writing was blocked. No blog. No book.

I still had ideas - lying in bed or walking the dog. Only the keyboard felt like it was wired to give off bad shocks. I couldn't touch it.

My blocks are almost all emotional and about bringing my words into being, and myself into public scrutiny. Last summer I signed with a well-known agent and my book (proposal) went on the market... and my book writing dried up (baring what turned out to be a few abortive restarts). Not at all coincidentally, the blog died when I said I put out those women's voices posts.

(Is this a kind of problem women have more than men, do you think? Or is this a gender-neutral dysfunction?)

Anyway... Emotional work ensued.

Blocks dissolved (at least partially, and for now).

My blog is back, and my book writing is (a little more tentatively) taking off again.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh....