Tag Archives: writer’s block

Finding Myself In The Story

6 Dec

Sometimes I’d like to get lost in a crowd

Let the energy swell around me

Until I don’t feel separate

But a small part of a whole entity

I am tired of myself

Everything feels so personal

So internal

So stressful

So petty

I used to see the world differently

And I want to go back to that place

Back to the realization that nothing matters

But my unique contribution

But love

Like every step has meaning

Like no word is lost

Like I know everything matters

Like I can really change things

Change the world

Yes, change myself first

Yes, raise a family too

But what about that BIG thing?

What about my HARD thing that I must do?

What about pouring myself out

and out,

and out again

Once, a long time ago,

A teenage girl sat in her room alone and promised God and herself

Everything would be different

That no day would be wasted

That purpose would seep out of every pore

That she would be single-minded to the point of recklessness

Now she’s tired and feeling 30

And she buries her head in her hands

And thinks of all that’s lost

Then realizes nothing is

Because I don’t have to move mountains

All at once

Only a stone at a time

My promises don’t matter as much

As what’s been promised to me

I can change things

Brick by brick

Bird by bird

Word by word

I can change myself

(I have to believe what I am doing matters. I have to give this everything. I have to become someone else. I have to be me. I have to get lost in the story. I have to find myself there.)

So here I go…

Photo 315

Tags: , , , ,

To All My Dreamers

21 Feb

To All My dreamers,

 

This one is for you.

To those of you that wake up with a gnawing passion to create something, anything.

And when the gnaw fades into hunger and doubt,

You can’t help but think,

 

“What the hell am I doing?”

“What have I done with my life?”

“What am I really accomplishing?”

“Maybe I should just give in, and get a real job.”

 

These words are poison and you know it,

But you let them sink in long enough to make you sick,

Then you release them.

Because something in you won’t give in.

Something knows it would be a slow and miserable death.

 

Because that thing

That thing you just have to do,

Is what makes you fully human

And fully immortal, all at once.

It is what makes you bleed and break and laugh and cry,

And start all over when you’re not giving it everything.

 

That thing

Causes you to realize you are made up of dirt and stars, 

To see your humanity face-to-face,

And to rise above it into the endless sky.

 

To those who’ve been ridiculed, criticized or even worse, ignored.

To all whose expressions of art drip with beauty and meaning, yet they are treated like common trash,

 

I see you.

I see your excruciating struggle to birth something the world has never seen,

Only to have it be discarded.

I see your swollen eyes, your ripped manuscript, your time spent in the mirror questioning yet again if you are good enough.

 

Please believe,

You are.

Please believe,

Someone in the world needs to see the way you express how to be human. 

Someone needs to know they are not alone.

 

But also please know, the world owes you nothing.

Not fame or recognition, wealth, a platform or “success.”

But once you really believe that, you will be free to create.

 

So please, Dreamer, don’t ever stop creating.

Don’t ever stop imagining.

Don’t ever stop dreaming.

Don’t ever stop pursuing that thing that makes you fully alive.

Don’t ever give up who you are for “the easy road.”

Don’t listen to those voices that tell you that you can’t or you shouldn’t,

Especially when it’s your own.

 

Wake up another day. Be thankful for a full mind, a heart, hands, and a voice.

Be thankful for the gift that runs through your veins and drives you to be extraordinary. 

 

 Go, create something beautiful.

somethingbeautiful

Tags: , , , ,

So It Begins

30 Jan

so it begins

just like this

a way that feels insignificant

(just like all great things)

a girl, typing on a keyboard

on a bleak January day

and her cup of coffee sits beside her, of course

her dog lays at her feet

it is audibly quiet

and mentally loud

and so she types

desperately needing something to make sense

for distractions to remain flung aside

for creativity to take over

 

this is the hard rocky ground before you strike water

these first few

(Sentences. Paragraphs. Pages. Chapters. Books.)

maybe the deeper and more powerful, the cleaner and more pure the water flow,

the more you must dig

and you must

otherwise, the water will be muddy

the color of her coffee that lays untouched

because even the act of lifting up the heavy mug to her lips may interrupt the flow

 

(This is such a weird thing)

to be connected and attached to this idea that’s not fully yours

to stress and strain and feel insignificant and incapable only to come back to the same place:

 

Writing is really just moving yourself out of the way so

Something else can speak through you

so why should I worry?

why should I fear?

why shouldn’t I just trust You

the voice

creativity Himself

 

Tags: ,

Write It Down

7 Jan

I’ve been trying to catch some words, darting about in my head like fireflies. Words are a tricky thing to catch, you see.

Reach out too fast and too greedy and they slip right by you, or come out all awkwardly squished and misshapen.

Wait a moment too long and they are gone.

A pile of laundry lies on my bed, a mountain of color and cloth yelling at me to be folded and put away.

I force myself to walk away. To ignore. To type. Something.

Because these tiny tasks add up to one big distraction of not doing what I was created to do.

I’ve been feeling right on the edge of something, maybe just these silly sentences, maybe even a line or two that will make me go,

“Mmmmm,” when I read it later.

I walked my dog Mumford last night, hurriedly, like I do, trying to get his business over and done with so we could go back into the apartment and get warm. In between buildings, in a dingy ill-kept courtyard with pathetic grass, I looked up between sparse tree branches and saw a scattered handful of stars. I let go of a deep exhale and watch my breath go up like a smoke signal. And I wondered why, why I don’t stop to look up more. Why I don’t breathe more.

Why each step doesn’t have greater purpose then getting to the next thing.

(The next big thing is here.)

And I think of all the things that crowd my mind and block my fingers from letting out the creativity I know wants to flow through me endlessly.

I know as I am sitting here on my bed at midnight next to my antsy dog and my laundry pile, that this is important.

My aching fingers continue to type and I suddenly I know why God invented writing:

Writing is spiritual and it is human. It is a dangerous, swaying bridge that crosses from one to another, with frayed ropes and missing planks to nearly fall through.

It is adventure.

Without this act, this putting of pen to paper, of words to a screen, there are inconsistencies and incompleteness to my existence. I live each day doing what I do, feeling what I feel, longing or loving or feeling lost or like I need to get lost. And in between the mental chatter, the eating, the working, the not always seeing, there is a great sacred itch, a haunting, a pressing that says:

“Write it down,”

Word by word. Bird by bird. Feather by feather. Bone by bone. One tiny effort at a time. It is not worthless.

It is really the most important thing I can do.

It is who I am. Depriving myself is suicide.

So I will ignore the laundry’s cries, the critic’s harsh voice, the ten thousand daily distractions.

I will stop and see my breath sending up smoke signals to the stars.

And I will live to write it down.

Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.

– Gore Vida

Tags: , , , , ,

(Another) Writer’s Declaration

28 Sep

“One day I will find the right words,

And they will be simple.”

-Jack Kerouac

 

don’t stop now

I can’t.

I won’t.

I’d sooner die.

just typing this is my choice weapon

the one fight I won’t walk away from

 

some people run miles or climb mountain

some build skyscrapers or billion dollar businesses.

I put one word after another

like bricks only not climbing upward,

but going inward towards understanding

day after day

I try to say something

an attempt to open up the ears and eyes of someone

even if it’s only mine

 

I’ll write

 

even when I don’t know why or how

even when I feel defeated

even when the road stretches on to nowhere

and I am deaf to those cheering me on

and blind to those traveling beside me

I’ll write because it’s the only way for me to be authentically human

to understand what that means or looks like

 

some people build bridges or wells or paint portraits

I use words to cross roads

or offer a drink to the thirsty

or capture the beauty of a person

I love it and I hate it

I am a slave to it and I am freed by it

But I can never stop.

never stop.

I can’t.

I won’t.

I’d sooner die.

 

Tags: , , ,

I Know Now Why Writers Are Crazy

27 Aug

The other night I was driving home from work on Precinct Line Road and the moon just rose above me, like it was trying to startle me, and I saw it for a moment, saw its beauty and really took it in and for a second I felt like myself, like really, truly myself at my best, not the me hiding behind small talk and small thinking.

I feel like myself now, too, in the best way. Typing away with nothing to gain and nothing to prove, just writing for livings sake.

I feel this for a moment, then I start judging myself and the criticism flies at me, unavoidable.

Why do I write about writing so much?

Perhaps there is a lot of empty air surrounding anything resembling a creative muse, and so I write about writing instead of actual events or metaphors.

Even now, my addict brain is shouting, “Gimme, gimme, drown me out with facebook, with something, quick I need a fix.”

No. No, I won’t live like that. I won’t deny myself breath. I hate the lazy part of myself but I indulge it as well.

If I need poetry to live, I am not doing a very good job at living.

I need Your words.

But sometimes they seem just out of reach.

A voice in me asks,
“What does it feel like?”

So I attempt to answer:

An archer poised to hit a target across a sea
not knowing which way the wind is blowing

A crying newborn flailing his arms to touch love
while the one who bore him is in the other room

owning a treasure map to a land that doesn’t exist in this world

that place of waking sleep when the answer is clear and clean
then slips away as you regain consciousness

writing everyone one of these shitty lines and hating them violently
wanting them to bleed out and die in front of me
wanting to give up and do something that involves less of me

So I write about writing as if he were my lover and my enemy, my life, my own obsession, my light and my darkness.

Maybe he is.

(I know now why writers are crazy)

Maybe he’s the only thing I’ve had to make me feel like me,

To keep my sanity. (sort of)
To even begin to make sense of myself and the world around me.

All these emotions, whirring, violently thrashing against the inside of me.

My eyes are beginning to close but I keep typing because I still am not there.

There are a lot of layers, I buried these things deep, this real sense of being, of mattering, of doing.

There it is:

Small.

Glinting.

Rough edges still.

But shiny.

And priceless.

Tags: , , , ,

Meager Wednesday Words

30 May

 

today I know I have something to say

but I don’t know how to say it

(seems to be the story of my life)

raging words

and silence

 

but no more

I stand under the shower

and hot water pounds on my mind

and slowly beckons

 

the rhythm and meter and

then

the words

 

unexpectedly

never forced

utter grace

 

“It’s easier,”

I think,

“To live with your

hands

mind

and heart

open.”

 

dust clouds had gathered for days

I felt listless

searching for meaning

 

it takes strength to walk through the mundane

as if it did not exist

as if it doesn’t have a hold on me

as days go by and nothing seems new

 

(but all things are)

 

and so I choose to live inside this pattern of words and cadence

I live

and know

I don’t need a mountain view

a foreign landscape

a near-death experience

to do what I do

 

“It takes bravery,”

I think,

“to live with your eyes

this open.”

Tags: , , , ,

%d bloggers like this: