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Blocking Writer’s Block – First Assignment – Sample “I remember”

August 9, 2009

In yesterday’s post, I suggested “I remember” as a writing exercise.  It’s a place where almost anyone can start writing any time.

I did my exercise in a beauty salon waiting for a hair cut.  I have to confess I cheated a little.  Because I knew I’d assigned it, I started the exercise in my head en route to the salon;  I also had to write down the last few sentences after they finished the haircut.  (They wouldn’t let me hold my notebook once the shampooing began.)

I did try not to erase or cross out when I wrote, or since this is an exercise, to edit, when I typed (though I did change names.)

Finally,  I didn’t intend to make the exercise itself about writing exercises and writing buddies, but because I was thinking about the blog, that’s what came to mind.  Which was fine.   The point of the exercise, if you try it, is to write about what you remember at the moment you sit down.  So here’s what I came up with 1:30 p.m., August 8, 2009.

“I remember”–

I remember when I first started these writing exercises.  It was years ago now;  I was invited into a group, a women’s group; I guess it was inherent back then that it was partly about writing, partly about “empowerment.”

There was Barbara with frizzy black hair and a dark green minivan; Helena who was Finnish, made documentary movies about anti-abortionists, and lived in a heavily subsidized mouth-watering West Village apartment right next to the Hudson.  (I never could figure out how she finagled that one.)  There was Evelyn who had long Auburn hair and a fey Pre-Raphaelite pout to her lips and who already, she told us later, borrowing sunblock, had had a melanoma removed.  There was Carrie, who I think was my original contact and who later came up to my house in the country one summer weekend with new husband in tow.  It was an unusually hot weekend and she insisted on dragging a mattress from the atticky bedroom I’d assigned them, down the stairwell and onto the screened porch that was just outside my window.  It’s an old house; it was an equally old mattress.  Mouse droppings littered the stairwell marking the path the mattress had lumped down.  The next day, still hot, she walked around most of the morning in a loose sweater with no underwear (pants either) making coffee for the new husband.  I’d recently gone through a wrenching separation from my own husband.  Suffice it to say, I never invited Carrie back again.

Then there was Agnes.  Agnes who was slender and small and upright in every sense of the word.  A dancer, an editor, a reader, a disciplined person, her back was straight at all times; her clothes trim and unwrinkled even if somehow vintage, her wavy hair pulled back, sometimes with tortoise shell combs which seemed in my mind to have the authority of reading glasses.

Helena, the one doing the documentaries about anti-abortionists, seemed to me to write about blood;  Evelyn, sex, Carrie, irritations, Barbara, the family life, Agnes, the physical and mental world, accreting images with great precision.  And me, probably pain at that point in my life (wrenching separation, remember?)

It was fun.  We usually met at Carrie’s or Helena’s since they’d managed the best apartments.  We ate chips, but since this was New York and either the West Village or the Upper West Side, they were special chips, like Blue chips (blue organic corn) or vegetable chips (sweet potato or taro), served with, you know, hummus.

Slowly, somehow, I don’t know how long it took–maybe Carrie’s bottomless weekend in the country precipitated it, it ended up being Barbara and Agnes and me.

We met at coffee shops, restaurants, choosing places for their lack of, or low, music;  their lack of, or slow, service; their lack of, or little interest in the fact that every few minutes we would each read aloud.

Barbara died a few years ago.

I remember her writing about braiding her daughters’ hair, the luck that her own was so curly (the girls were half African-American, she wasn’t), what that gave them in common.

I remember her writing about the slap of her feet in her Karate dojo.  There was a host of square shouldered men at her funeral—black belts, I thought.  The sweat that gathered in the crease inside her elbow. The joy of a kyaii.

I remember her writing about sex; her husband coming home too late, proffering her his cock.

You get to know your writing buddies very very well.

You know about the times they fought with their parents, their boyfriends in back seats, the times they lied to themselves and others, the times they told the truth.

I remember a last writing session.  I don’t know what we wrote about.  Barbara made mango-scented green tea.  She was drinking a lot of green tea those days though the cancer was irretrievably advanced.  She dragged equipment behind her around the apartment, black plastic sacking on wheels.  She’d always been someone with dimples.

Agnes and I still write together when we have time.

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Blocking Writer’s Block – First Assignment

August 8, 2009

Since I’ve been writing so much about the value of writer’s exercises, I thought it might be interesting to actually give you one.

The rules are:

  1. Write for a pre-set time.  Ten minutes is a good start.  If you go over, fine, don’t go under.
  2. Don’t stop moving your pen, or stop typing.  If you are using a pen, use a good one, with flow.  If you are typing, try not to read too much as you go.
  3. Don’t cross out.  Don’t erase. Don’t backspace.  If you want to use a different word than the one you’ve just used, just write down the new word.  But keep going.  Don’t stop to judge or evaluate.
  4. Feel free to cheat a little if rules make you feel stuck.

(As noted previously, these rules are derived from Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones.)

The topic is “I remember“.  This is a nice topic for writers who are blocked, for writers who are not blocked but very tired, for people who don’t consider themselves writers but would simply like to write.   Hardly anyone can truly say that they can’t come up with something.

I will post mine tomorrow.

Check out 1 Mississippi, for people who don’t care so much about writing, but want to learn to count.   Link to the side.   On Amazon.

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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part VI – Be Brave – Read Aloud

August 8, 2009

I want to begin with apologies for my last post to those who are not interested in Robert Pattinson’s struggle with paparazzi.  I find the subject fascinating – the part about the struggles with the paparazzi, that is — but I understand it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.  So let’s try blocking writer’s block again:

Rule No. 8   –  Be Brave.  Read Aloud.

If you’ve been following this blog at all, you may remember Blocking Writer’s Block Rule No. 3 –  Get a Friend.

By “friend,” I mean writing buddy, someone that you actually write with, meaning right next to, someone with whom you do writing exercises.  Your writing buddy may also be someone with whom you share finished, or nearly finished work, but the exercises I’m talking about are the ones that you do on the immediate spur of a new topic, the ones that you write for a set period of time (ten to twenty minutes usually) without stopping, erasing or crossing out.

The next step- after your set time for each exercise is finished –is for you and your buddy to read your exercises aloud.

To each other.

Right then and there.

(I’m not joking, and I want to take advantage of this break in the flow to give credit to Natalie Goldberg,  Writing Down the Bones, who originally popularized these types of writing processes.)

Yes, I know.  Reading aloud is a bit like taking off your clothes in a crowded room.  Only worse.  Because the crowd may be so busy, people may not even notice your nakedness.  Okay, they’ll probably notice.  But it’s a crowd, right?  There may be no one that you know, no one that you need ever see again

Your writing buddy is presumably a friend of sorts.  He/she is staring (i.e. listening) right next to you.  At/to just you.  You hope to know each other for a long time to come.

Plus, you’ve just done an exercise that absolutely proves how idiotic you are.

But here’s the trick of it.  Your writing buddy has to read aloud too.  You might even be able to make them read aloud first.  They too have written an exercise that exposes their idiocy.

When you each start removing the clothes… ahem… reading aloud, it’s a tremendous feeling—of freedom, exhilaration, acknowledgement, even if coupled with acute embarrassment.

I don’t know if it helps, but usually my writing buddy and I preface each reading aloud with some well-worn warning such as “this one is so stupid.”  Or “I don’t know where this came from.”  Or a simple heartfelt groan.  This type of introduction is not obligatory, but it does tend to clear the throat.

Natalie Goldberg sets a few ground rules for the listeners of read-aloud exercises.  These include a prohibition against evaluating the work—against saying anything akin to either “I really like that,” or “eeuww.”  In Natalie Goldberg’s workshops, she urges the listeners simply to echo the phrases that they remember from the piece, a practice which encourages closer listening, but also tends to emphasize what was most vivid about the writing.

That’s probably a good idea.  Even praise can be stultifying in the case of exercises;  soon you are distracted, writing your exercise for the praise, and frankly, you can’t always do a good one.  (Then, when you don’t, you feel horrible.)

But for me and my buddy, Natalie’s prohibitions are hard to follow.  We really don’t have the short-term memories anymore to repeat too many phrases  that we’ve just heard.   And we know each other too well not to guffaw, or say “wow” or “whoops!”  So we are usually quite free with our commentary.  This makes our writing time more fun.  I would warn you, however, that beginners at these exercises might want to be a bit more circumspect.

Still, the question of evaluations raises an important point.  One of the greatest things about reading an exercise aloud is that you are putting your work out into the world.  You are exposing your work in a very intimate way;  it’s not just your words you are putting out there, it’s also your voice.  It could hardly be more personal.

But what’s great, what might even make it possible, is that you’re only doing it for a minute or two.  You’re reading aloud, and then you are done.  No one’s taping you.  No one has your printed page to peruse.  You’ve put it out there, then grabbed it back.

Besides, it’s a DRAFT.  You did it in ten minutes, fifteen minutes.

It’s relatively easy under these circumstances to follow the first rule of blocking writer’s block which is simply not to care too much.

Nonetheless, they are your words, it is your voice, it does take courage.  So be brave—read aloud.

You’ll be very glad you did.

(To be continued with Rule No. 9– Don’t be too brave too soon!  Know your limits.)

Also, sometime soon, I’d like to write about the benefits of reading drafts aloud to yourself, and reading at public readings.  But that’s for the future.

For now, please check out the link for 1 Mississippi, my counting book for children who like elephants (and watercolors) on Amazon.  See the link above.

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To Robert Pattinson Re Leaving New York and Fast Sporty Cars

August 7, 2009

Dear Rob,

It’s so boring here in New York now you’ve gone.

As an admirer whose feelings are strictly maternal (check out July post, why my feelings for Robert Pattinson must be strictly maternal), a part of me is happy for you.  Those paparazzi were such thugs.  The endless click of their cameras on all the youtube videos was like the sound of huge skittering cockroaches.  Their voices, calling out your name, sometimes lewd questions too, were crude, thick, loutish.  I got such satisfaction out of absolutely hating them on your behalf.

And I did feel truly sorry for you.  Seriously.  Maternally.  Which, I have to confess, was a great way to use up my downtime.

Besides all the photos.  Dozens of them every single day.  You in Washington Square, out on Long Island, Brooklyn, Central Park.  And though I think it’s more a tribute to your features than the talent of those bloodsucking (oops! Sorry!) paparazzi, an amazingly large number of them were pretty charming shots.

But now you’ve gone back to LA and the paparazzi just don’t seem to have the same access.  I guess that’s because it’s a place where you don’t walk or take cabs, but drive everywhere in fast, sporty cars.

Speaking of fast, sporty cars, you seem to have gotten yourself a new one. You apparently lost your old car (which I imagined as used and agreeably beaten up) because, in the chaos of your new fame, you forgot where you had parked it.  (This made me feel doubly maternal towards you–a misplaced car almost automatically raises maternal feelings of some kind.)

I have to confess, though, that there is something that bothers me about LA (besides the fast, sporty cars).  Maybe it’s the conspicuous wealth.  Or the ability to hide wealth.  Or the fact that wealth in LA can be conspicuous and hidden at once.  Meaning that people can both flaunt what they’ve got and also live in an enclave.

New York City certainly has its share of very wealthy people.  But here, at least, the rich and the poor have to walk the same sidewalks, and, in your case, get mobbed by the same crowds.  (Only yours are usually young female crowds.)

Maybe the saddest thing for me about knowing that you’re driving around LA in a fast, sporty car, is that it somehow destroys my already feeble fantasy that I could somehow, someday, write a book that you would be interested in, and somehow, someday, get you the manuscript, and somehow, someday, convince you to be in the movie based on that manuscript.

Yes, I know it was very silly.  People who know my work will point out that you don’t look anything like an elephant.  Still while you were here, walking behind several supposedly lax security guards, there seemed to be always the chance.

To see my counting book for children and elephants, check out the link for 1 Mississippi.

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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part V – No Permission Needed

August 4, 2009

Rule No. 7  – You don’t need permission to do your work

Sometimes if you are a parent, a partner, or even just someone living with others in this world, your writing, painting, music-playing, yoga – whatever it is that you aspire to keep doing in your private life, whatever it is you do to feel fully you—gets overlooked because you’re convinced you don’t have the time.

Rather, you’re convinced that you don’t have the “right” time.

You wait for the opportune moment; those precious minutes in which there’s nothing else you think you need to do, nothing that you think others need you to do.

Then, even when there really isn’t anything, or not very much—dinner is done, kids and partner are, sort of, settled in–you wait a bit longer.  Partly because you’re tired, and partly because the moment still doesn’t feel right.  You don’t feel free enough to begin.  Something is still missing.

Often what you are truly waiting for is to be given permission, permission to turn to your private work, permission to take time to be solely yourself. Sometimes, especially if you are on the insecure side, you are even waiting to be urged, encouraged, exhorted.   You want someone to give you a cue, to tell you that the moment you have been waiting for has arrived, to get you going.

Don’t do this.   It will not get you to your work nor will it endear you to your loved ones.  (Or at least, it won’t endear them to you!)

Because even the most enlightened children are not going to turn to you and say, “hey mom, don’t bother to make those cupcakes, why don’t you just go write for a while?”

Your loving partner is unlikely to volunteer: “I’ll just turn off the t.v. dear, so you’ll have peace to work by.”

Unless you work in a zoo, your employer will not come out with “we’ve noticed you like drawing elephants.  Why don’t you just stay home and practice Fridays?”

Not even the dishes soaking in the sink will quietly give you the freedom to go and write that sonnet.

Don’t get mad at them.  (Especially not the dishes or the children.  The partner maybe.)

Because this is a battle you have to take on yourself.  If you want to do your work, you have to allow yourself to do it.  (More than allow, you have to make.)

This means accepting that no permission is necessary; that there is no “right” moment, just this moment.

If you succeed in seizing the moment, accept in advance that you are unlikely to win any kudos.  The children, husband, dishes, may listen to your sonnet; but they probably won’t congratulate you on it.  Not enough to make you feel completely justified anyway, to give you retroactive permission.

At least not at the beginning.

Hopefully, as everyone ages, they may be happy that you were able to be fully yourself.  They may recognize that you were giving them permission to be fully themselves too.  Even though no permission is necessary.

And even at the cost of those cupcakes.

Check out my counting book with beautiful paintings of elephants (no permission was necessary) on Amazon.  See link to 1 Mississippi.

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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part IV

August 2, 2009

Rule No. 6.  Go into yourself.

Yes, I know.  Yesterday’s rule (Blocking Writer’s Block – Part III) was get out of yourself.   And yes, if you are following this blog at all, you probably see a certain pattern emerging. (Other than the pattern in which I write a few serious blogs and then sneak in some commentary on Robert Pattinson.)

But my advising you to go into yourself right after I’ve told you to get out of yourself is really not a contradiction.  Because what I’m advocating is that the two steps be taken at different times.  (Also, remember that I am writing about writer’s block here.  If things are flowing, do whatever you want.)

Getting out of yourself means getting out of your normal grooves. Getting a fresh starting point.

But once you have that starting point, you need to have something to say, right?  Something not generic, something unique.  You have one great big source of the non-generic right at your fingertips.  This is yourself.  Your own set of experiences, which if observed with precision and care, are inherently unique.

Now, I really do not push the idea that all writing should be memoir, or confessional, or navel-gazing.  Besides the huge danger of self-indulgence, self-justification, martyrdom, in that kind of writing, your friends and family will never speak to you again.

But it really is helpful in getting out of writer’s block, in writing exercises, in loosening up your writing sinews, to feel free to write from your own experience, to write of what you know well.

This does not have to be directly about yourself.  It can be the mood of your childhood kitchen summer mornings, or Sunday mornings, or Sunday nights—each one way way different.   It can be the geometry of light on the bottom of your community swimming pool;  it can be the lines on the bark of a locust tree you used to lean against, counting, when “it” in hide and sick.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love plot, narrative.  And I love things that are created and fantastical.   (I’ve written a fantasy novel which I hope to publish soon.)   And frankly, getting too caught up in your own experience can inhibit invention, and can be very very limiting.

But in an exercise in which your primary goal is to simply learn how to think with your hands, to let words flow through your fingertips, it is usually easiest at first to focus on what you know.

It actually takes a lot of courage.  The subject is there, but grasping the details, and then putting them on the page, can take real fearlessness.  Especially when writing with a buddy.  Especially if ever actually re-reading on your own.

But be brave.  Take up the thread you’ve been given, that surprising thread that you got from someone else—that topic, or those random words—and follow the thread into yourself.  Follow it through curve and cranny.  Take a Rube Goldbergesque approach to your exercise.  Put in the leaky bucket and the grandmother in the rocking chair, don’t worry about sleekness–whatever works is terrific, whatever gets the job done.

Remember always, if not now, when?

And if you do follow the thread to something that actually happened to you, then sit inside that happening and look at it freshly.  Can you see the pores in your Uncle’s nose?  Tell us about them.  Were there fireflies blinking right next to the laces of your husband’s hiking boot?  Make them blink on the page.

Pretend that a brain surgeon has accidentally stimulated that place in your brain where all that particular data are stored.  Was there mica in the dust in the curb?  Did your friend hold out her hands as she balanced on the brick wall?  Did her fingers lengthen in the grey air?   Use memory, but feel free to mix in invention.  And if you’re stuck, look around the room you are writing in.  Or rustle further around inside.  You’ve had tons of experiences.  Mix it up.   You don’t need to stick with just one.

And remember always always, that this is an exercise, a draft.  Is your time really so precious you can’t spend a bit on something that you might end up throwing away?  Oh please!

To be continued. …

Check out my children’s picture book 1 Mississippi  on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249231671&sr=8-1

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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part III – Get Out Of Yourself

August 1, 2009

Rule Number 5 – Get Out of Yourself.

Sometimes all you can think when you sit down to write is that you can’t write, you hate writing, you have nothing at all to say.

Jotting down this litany can be a legitimate way to get started.   At least, it gets your pen or fingers moving.  Pretty soon, though, it’s boring—or in the case of the variation used in The Shining – ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ – seriously creepy.  In other words, you are putting something down on the page, but you are still stuck in a rut, a rut of your own stuckness.

One way to avoid this stuckness is to try to get out of yourself, your typical grooves.  If I were more Buddhist, I would probably suggest looking around yourself, feeling your connection to the greater world.  But since I am a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist (who likes the idea of Buddhism but is not so good at its practice), my advice is to get someone else to give you a topic (or, even better, a simple set of words.)

By “topic”, I don’t mean a paper topic, something to mull over and explicate.  I mean a writing exercise topic, something to use as a jumping off point; a stepping stone into your stream of consciousness.  But a new stepping stone, not one of the habitual ones that’s become a boulder sealing off flow.

Writing exercises are a wonderful tool for breaking down writer’s block.  They deserve their own posts, which I hope to write.   As a brief introduction here, I’ll just say that the exercises I prefer are short, sweet, and relatively low risk.  They have three basic parameters (derived again from Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones):

1.  Pick a set short time period for each exercise in advance.  Use a clock, and make yourself and your writing buddy stick to it.    (Ten minutes is a good amount to start with.  If you want to be anarchical—try seven, twelve or thirteen minutes.  Five is a bit short.)

2.  Keep your pen moving or your fingers typing throughout your set time.  (Meaning don’t stop and think about what you are going to write next, just write.)

3.   No crossing out; no back-spacing, no deletes.   (Not during your time limit.)

So back to your topic (someone else’s topic).  Choices are infinite.  It can be a single starting point:  “I remember” can be a good one, or “I don’t remember.”   Something about grandmothers often works (almost everyone has something to write about their grandmother.)

But although that kind of single topic can be interesting, you can also get stuck all over again trying to pick the “right” one.

To skip that quandary, it’s sometimes best to just use a list of 5-7 random words as “topic”.   The advantage of several words is that none has to be ideal.  The requirement is that you simply have to use the words, not actually write about them—they are not your theme (unless you want one of them to be.)

It’s best if the words are not chosen by you, or at least not by you alone.  (Choosing with a buddy is fine.)  This is because it can be very very hard to make a fresh channel through your own head.  The mind is just so tricky—it tends to cling to the old grooves, comfortable with the familiar, even the painful, tiresome familiar.  The mind is also a master of self-justification; it loves to set up situations in which it can say, ‘I told you so.’

A quick example:  let’s say that you’re stuck trying to write about your cousin’s wedding last year (or last decade) when you suddenly realized that everyone in your family thought you were too bossy, too demanding, to insecure, to ever feel loved.  You’ve tried to write the story, you may even need to write the story, but you just haven’t been able to.

So maybe you need to put it aside for a bit; warm up those fingers with something completely different.  But if you’re picking you own random words, you may still end up with “rice, veil, resentment, glare, daggers, heart, tin cans.”  Pretty soon you’re stuck all over again; you may be writing, but your subject may also be the same old thing–how lousy you feel about yourself and your family.

But if your buddy, or if you have no buddy, your friend, your child, or even your dictionary, picks the words, you might end up with things like” drill, jackhammer, whammo, smudge, chocolate cake” words that have a better chance of taking you into unexplored territory.

You may not initially feel like exploring that territory.  Let’s say you’re completely disinterested in drills, only mildly interested in chocolate cake.   Your exercise doesn’t need to be about drills; it just needs to use the word.  It can come out as metaphor: “the chords of Wagner’s wedding march were like a jackhammer, drilling into her brain.”  Or, “the icing formed a snowy veneer, but she knew that her cousin, who truly was the bossy, demanding one in the family, had insisted on a chocolate cake beneath it.”

So maybe you can’t leave your groove.  Still you can at least approach it from a different direction.  The direction may just feel like a detour but, like the classic detour, it may also help you bypass the closed lanes of your normal route and to miss all those pesky orange cones.

Please check out my picture book, 1 Mississippi, at Amazon.com.  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249155338&sr=8-1

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A Poetic Interlude

July 31, 2009

For those of you that can’t relate to Twilight (or understand my obsession –I can’t either), I’m posting aVillanelle.  This was written as part of a writing exercise over the phone with my dear writing buddy.  (See Blocking Writer’s Block  – Part II), and when I was lucky enough to be in a quiet woodsy place where I could walk while jotting.

Swimming in Summer

Our palms grew pale as paws in northern climes
as water soaked right through our outer skin.
In summers past, how brightly water shines,

its surface sparked by countless solar mimes,
an aurora only fragmented by limb.
Our palms grew pale as paws in northern climes

as we played hide and seek with sunken dimes,
diving beneath the waves of echoed din;
in summers past, how brightly water shines.

My mother sat at poolside with the Times’
Sunday magazine; I swam by her shin,
my palms as pale as paws in northern climes,

sculpting her ivory leg, the only signs
of life the hair strands barely there, so prim
in summers past.  How brightly water shines

in that lost pool; and all that filled our minds
frozen now, the glimmer petrified within
palms grown pale as paws in northern climes.
In summers past, how brightly water shines.

Copyright 2008, Karin Gustafson, All rights reserved.

Check out 1 Mississippi on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249040514&sr=8-1

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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part II

July 30, 2009

Sorry, but I have to start this Part II of “Blocking Writer’s Block” with a correction to Part I. In Part I, discussing Rule No. 1 – Don’t Care, I suggested that you might tell yourself from the start that what you are writing was stupid.

What I really meant here was to tell yourself that what you are writing is a DRAFT, that it can be stupid, that it doesn’t matter, that you can change it, that you WILL change it.

It’s a draft, right?  So you can throw it away if you want, you can burn it.

But keep in mind that maybe, just maybe, there will be some scraps of this draft that you will want to save.  And, if not–if the draft really is stupid– that it will at least have allowed you to work through some of  the junk clogging your voice, to break down some of the fences in your head. Even if all you unclog or breakdown ends up on the bonfire, this is terrific.

So just do it, get started, don’t care.

Rule No. 3 – Get a friend.

Get a friend. By friend, I mean writing buddy. Not someone you can show your work to.   That kind of friend is great. But the kind of buddy that you need when you are suffering from writer’s block is someone you can actually write with, at the side of or across the table from. Someone who is writing too.

I’m not talking about collaboration here. Collaboration may be nice but it’s an awfully lot of pressure for someone with writer’s block.

I’m talking about company.

Having a writing buddy is a bit like going to the gym or taking an exercise class. If you’re an Olympic swimmer, you can probably jump into an absolutely deserted pool, and swim three hours without stop. But if you’re tired, grumpy, out of shape (and as a writer, possibly fearful), it’s useful to be with someone going through the same travail. Energy is contagious; companionship can replace discipline; even the feeling that you are performing (which comes simply by doing something in front of someone else) can be a useful goad.

Choose someone you trust, or that you can learn to trust. Because the second part of writing with a buddy is reading aloud what you have written. (I will write more about reading aloud another time, but only will say now that this technique is again derived from Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones.)

Arrange to meet with your buddy regularly if you can. If you can’t meet, set a time when you and your buddy can write over the phone. This means that you call up your buddy, set a time limit and topic, then hang up the phone and you both start writing until one of you calls back. (Remote companionship is better than none.)

Be friends with your buddy, but limit the small talk;  socializing can eat up limited writing time, and the urge to procrastinate is great. If you have something to say, write it down. (Then, as we’ll discuss later, read it aloud.)

Rule No. 4 – Cultivate Solitude.

It’s useful to have a writing buddy. But writing is an inherently solitary process. When you are writing, it’s just you and the words, just you and the page or the computer screen, just you.

Learn to enjoy that solitude, even to crave it. Find company in your words, your page, your screen.

It helps to be quiet. (This is a rule I need to practice a lot more.) Try not to talk through every story or emotion in your telephone calls—save some of your voice for your work.

Don’t mindlessly turn on the radio or the t.v.; don’t mindlessly speed-dial or text. It’s so easy in the modern world to be addicted to constant stimulation; give it a rest.

Even pull yourself away from friends and relatives sometimes.  Loved ones, as much as they love you, will rarely say, ‘hey why don’t you take time for yourself to  write?’   You have to be the one to pull away.  (And you won’t always want to.)

Still, if you want to write, if you want to break through a block, it is something you may need to work on.

The advantage of quiet for the writer  is that it gives you something to fill up, a fresh blank page.

If the blank page is just too stark, write in a public place—a café, a library, a subway car, a park. Your surroundings can be your subject matter.

But, even in this public space, work hard to keep some quiet in your head, to maintain some loneness, the “you ” that is separate from the place, looking out.  Meaning be friendly to others, but if you’re there to write, write.  Meaning don’t think about the dirty laundry, that call you need to make, that other homework you haven’t yet done.  Those are uninvited guests, pests; kick them out.

The words that are trying to come out of your hands need quiet to be written.   At first, these are often very shy words.

To be continued….

P.S.  Check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249001844&sr=8-1

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Writer’s Block (How To Overcome It) – A Series

July 29, 2009

Okay, I’ll stop.  No more writing about Robert Pattinson.  (For now anyway.)   Let’s turn to writing itself.  Writing and writer’s block.

First admission:  What I know about is getting something down on paper, or, if you prefer the computer screen.  So this post is not about writing for commercial success.  Though I’d like to know more about that, this is simply about writing.

Second admission:  I rarely personally suffer from writer’s block.  I suffer from writer’s foot-in-mouth disease, writer’s tinnitus (an ailment whose symptoms are manifest by a ringing in the reader’s ears), and increasingly both writer’s dementia (meaning that I write about crazy subjects like Robert Pattinson), and writer’s senility, meaning that I frequently simply mistype or live out words (like “live” instead of “leave”).

But I somehow avoid writer’s block.  I like to think that this is because of my lifelong attempt to follow the rules set down here.  I hope they will be useful to you too.

Before putting down a couple of these rules, I also want to give credit to Natalie Goldberg, author of  the wonderful Writing Down the Bones, who has been an inspiration for many years and founded many of these techniques (or versions of them).

Rule Number One:  Don’t Care.

Don’t care so much. Tell yourself from the start that your writing will be stupid, the story will be boring, the paper will be ridiculous.  Don’t even care if all you can write is, “I have nothing to say, I’m an idiot.”  So what?  There are many idiots in the world.   Don’t worry about it.  Just make yourself sit down and start.

If you’re having trouble not caring (and trouble starting), a pen and paper may be better helpmates than a computer.  There’s a flow of hand and pen which can produce a genuinely pleasant sensation, like swallowing a cool drink.  More importantly, most people have a fairly hard time reading their own handwriting (a definite assist on a first draft.)  The computer, in contrast, flashes extremely legible words back at you as you go.  It’s worse than a mirror; it can make you cringe before you even complete your image.

The computer can also be hard for the resistant because it allows for such easy escape.   Most composition books have no internet connection.

If you can’t write smoothly by hand, and you must write on the computer, and you get paralyzed there, then train your eyes to look away.   Stare into space, a wall.  Only check the screen often enough to make sure you haven’t gotten onto the wrong keys.  Frankly, even a few sentences of gobbledygook may be better than hours of paralysis.   (Remember this is only for those with writer’s block–if you don’t have it, look at the screen!)

If you are lucky enough to feel comfortable with pen in hand, go for one that can gather momentum—a roller, a fine-tipped felt, a fountain pen.   Cheap ballpoints can be as bad as rubber soles on concrete, sticking and tripping you up.

Once you get started, don’t stop to re-read until you reach a clear breaking point, perhaps set by a timer in advance.  Don’t cross out, don’t correct.  Don’t care.

(Not until the second draft anyway.)

Rule Number Two:  Care.

Care.  Think that your work is worth doing, think that you are worth the doing of it.

If you have an idea, care enough to stop whatever else you are doing and sit there with your pen and paper or your fingers and keyboard and write it down.  Care enough to write when you are walking, eating, on the train.  (Care enough to be impolite if you must.  Tell your kids to turn off the music or t.v.   Shut the door.)

If you don’t have an idea, care enough to turn off the t.v. yourself.  Remove yourself from the internet.  Care enough to stay at home on a beautiful day or even a work day or even a Saturday night if you are working or feel like you might.

If you’re stuck,  take a walk,  let your mind take a walk too.  Care enough to carry a composition book, even though you tell yourself you probably won’t need it, so that if an idea does come, you can write while you walk (being impolite if necessary).

Think:  if not now, when?  As I heard outside a garage in Greenwich Village one Saturday night:  “come on.  Life’s too short to enjoy it.”

To be continued.

PS:  Check out 1 Mississippi on Amazon, counting book with numbers, elephants and steamboats.  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248915782&sr=8-1

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