After the post two weeks ago, Debz asked about writer\u2019s block and ways to overcome it. Also, a friend has asked about self-loathing in connection with writer\u2019s block.<\/p>\n
Self-loathing first, I always say.<\/p>\n
Several months ago I applied for admission to an advanced poetry workshop and sent along six of my poems that I like a lot. I was rejected. The professor takes only ten students. The woman who gave me the bad news said that sixty people had applied, which wasn\u2019t much comfort. Six million applicants would have been comfort, a little.<\/p>\n
The rational one percent of my brain told me that this teacher wasn\u2019t right for me, that the rejection was fortunate because I shouldn\u2019t study with someone who didn\u2019t appreciate my work. The rest of me felt bad, and all of me didn\u2019t write a single poem for a month, although I had one bubbling up in me. I certainly wasn\u2019t punishing the teacher, who didn\u2019t care if I never wrote my kind of poems ever again. I was punishing myself for not being good enough. That\u2019s a dose of self-loathing.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I wrote a poem, and not a revenge poem either. I\u2019m past the self-loathing for now, although I have set aside a dab of other-loathing for the teacher who rejected me.<\/p>\n
Time helped me get past the self-loathing, and understanding what I was doing to myself also helped. Anyway, self-loathing, in my opinion is one of the hardest feelings to bear, much worse than clean, blistering anger. Understanding why I\u2019m mad at myself is usually the cure, but sometimes I just have to tough it out and wait for the spell to pass, which so far it always has.<\/p>\n
I have never gotten the kind of writer\u2019s block where I can\u2019t write a word – hope I never do – but I can get stuck in a story and not know where to go next. This can happen when I can\u2019t tell the story I want to tell. For example, in Fairest I wanted a lot of the story to be about the insecure queen, Ivi, and the ways the evil creature in the mirror uses her insecurity to manipulate her. I wanted to show evil at its evilest, at its most insinuating. This Ivi-mirror element made it into the book, but very thinly, nothing like what I had in mind. I couldn\u2019t tell that plot thread fully. Maybe someday I\u2019ll be able to, but probably at that point I\u2019ll be trying to write about something else. I\u2019ve said this before, that ideas are different than words on paper. The story that is possible for me to tell may be very different from the one I want to tell.<\/p>\n
The same thing happened with The Two Princesses of Bamarre. I was trying to tell the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but I couldn\u2019t figure it out, and I was stuck and blocked, and it took a long, slow time with lots and lots of notes for me to find the story I could tell.<\/p>\n
Writer\u2019s block is like insomnia. It\u2019s your brain that won\u2019t let you write, obviously, and it\u2019s your brain that won\u2019t let you sleep. In insomnia, you\u2019re tired, but your brain refuses to relax. The brain gets just as tense and uncooperative in writer\u2019s block. <\/p>\n
I read a great and helpful book about insomnia, not that I have a problem, called The Insomnia Answer by Dr. Paul Glovinsky and Dr. Arthur Spielman. It\u2019s a reassuring book. The good docs take the pressure off, and some of what they say applies to writer\u2019s block, among other things, that a missed night\u2019s sleep is not a tragedy. A day without progress in a story is no tragedy either. Hey, I may have a great writing day and then wind up cutting everything I wrote. I feel better than on a blocked day, but the result is the same.<\/p>\n
They advise the frustrated sleeper not to stay in bed indefinitely, but to get up for a while and do something boring, something that won’t be fascinating enough to prevent a return to bed after a while. We frustrated writers need to put in time at our desks, but eventually we need a break too, and a boring break may be just the thing to allow a good idea to surface. Take a walk or a bubble bath, chop vegetables, play solitaire (mystery writer Lawrence Block\u2019s remedy), and let your mind swing free.<\/p>\n
The brilliant doctors write about the sleep drive, which will eventually get an insomniac sleeping. There is a writing drive, too, which will at long last overcome the barriers our silly brains throw up. This writing drive is our most important ally. I may sound New Age-ish here, because trust is involved, and mistrust is the enemy. If you are convinced that the block will never crumble, it still will, but it will linger longer than if you know that it is doomed. You gain trust by experience, and maybe, I hope, by trusting me. Take my word for it: Writer\u2019s block will pass.<\/p>\n
While you\u2019re in the midst of it, however, be kind to yourself, as if you were a child down with a fever. Don\u2019t yell at yourself. Don\u2019t reduce yourself to tears. Don\u2019t even think the word bootstraps or failure, unless you are taking pleasure in your wallowing. The point is, even in writer\u2019s block, have as much fun as you can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the post two weeks ago, Debz asked about writer\u2019s block and ways to overcome it. Also, a friend has asked about self-loathing in connection with writer\u2019s block. Self-loathing first, I always say. Several months ago I applied for admission to an advanced poetry workshop and sent along six of my poems that I like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}