when you decide you want to be a writer, it's not immediately that writer's block hits. it's not a sudden brick wall - like you're an undertrained marine, and the rest of the giant muscular people are racing around you and climbing the wall as though they have suction cups on their hands and feet.
it sneaks up on you. one day you're writing things in your notebook, and you're in happy land, and you've written in your long term goals that you'd like to write a book and who cares what kind of book because you can write anything so it's perfect! and then, you find excuses not to write. you have to get to the gym, and you've run out of ideas, and of course there's that person who will be reading your writing, and you don't want to hurt their feelings. and all of a sudden it's been months and you sit down to come up with a real, meaningful thing to write about, and you realize it's been there.... for as long as you can remember without ever having actually arrived. your mind is blank and you can't think of a single thing worth writing.
you can come up with a grocery list - and, only with the assistance of a pinterest recipe that took 45 minutes to decide on - and sometimes you can jot down small tidbits of information that come to mind every day or so. sometimes even - while sitting in a session, seminar, training module or something else that's rather important to listen to - you can spout out a page worth of thought, and it gives you a little more hope that there's something still in there.
and most other days, you sit down. and while it always seemed funny, and even a bit ironic in sex and the city when carrie sat with the cursor blinking on the screen, you stare. for hours. (sometimes at brad pitt)
i received a bit of advice from a friend lately - a friend who has made a life out of writing for other people, and for himself. spending days and nights writing both what people ask for, and what makes him happy. he shared with me - while we were discussing the process of writing a book, and what it means in the context of a full life - that a writer should spit out the first draft. make it ugly, make it awful and get it all out. there's room for editing later - the important part is getting it out. it resonated so soundly with me, as i was at the end of a 4 week dry streak of not finding anything to write.
that creative block that gets us - no matter your creativity - it's the launching of the action in creative pursuits.
i'm going to the art gallery. take THAT writer's block.
