Okay (to the regular readers of this blog), I admit that the draft poem posted at about 1 a.m. this morning is blank verse in the truest (and possibly, worst) sense of the word. I’d like to dignify it with some epithet like Creelyesque, but I’d hate to do that to the wonderful Robert Creeley.
Instead, I’ll explain away the poem by giving it as an example of an effort to block writer’s block. If you want to write, you have to write. It really is as simple as that. You have to do it without being too precious about every single result. That’s probably an elemental rule for getting yourself to do anything creative.
Waiting for the right conditions, the right mindset, even a modicum of brain power, may put you in a queue of one forever; if you wait for inspiration, there you might be–in the abandoned mind bakery–holding a ticket that is never called. (Even if it is called, all those wonderful half-baked goods may have gone completely stale by the time you actually get to the counter!)
Sure, an inner voice may tell you urgently that you are a writer, an artist, but it’s unlikely to tell you in the hurly-burly of every single day exactly what to set down.
That’s where doggedness comes in (and not necessarily the doggedness of the wiggly happy dog that greets you at the door every evening.) It’s more like the dog that is pawing pawing pawing at the zipper of your backpack because it is sure that somewhere inside nestles a treat. Sometimes that treat is the old remains of a bagel; sometimes it’s chocolate!
Which, I know, yes, is terrible for dogs. (More for us.)
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