Writers Block and Inspiration

Writers block. It plagues us all.

Or does it?

Over the years I've had my fair share of those moments, staring at the screen or page, chewing at my fingernails and waiting for inspiration to come. In those settings, I find it rarely does come. Some people say to just press on, write anything you can manage to get out and then come back and fix it later. That may work for them, but for me the process of facing such terrible writing, having to cut so much and finding so little left over, the effort for that is not worth it to me.

In those moments of staring and waiting, I've found that it's not so much that I'm not inspired to write, it's that I'm not inspired to write that story. Most of the time I enjoy pure writing inspiration and I find it pretty easy to work on any of my projects. In the moments when I'm not so inspired, it becomes a matter of finding what story I am inspired to work on. So long as I don't let myself get too stuck on trying to work on one story when the creativity isn't there, I'm always able to find a story I can work on.

Quite often, the story I find myself solely inspired to tell is the one that's been lurking in the back of my mind and that I've been ignoring. Sometimes I purposefully ignore a story just so that when the inspiration comes, it comes in spades. Those times are some of my favorite writing moments because everything just flows and I become a simple conduit through which the story travels onto the page. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not meaning to sound mystical about my writing. It's just that there are, occasionally, magical moments for me in writing.

I was recently hit with one of these episodes of writers block. I was trying to flesh out a chapter in IMMOLATION. The main writing was done, I just needed to do some touch ups on the dialogue and character development. I spent almost an hour on the same paragraph before I had to admit I was getting nowhere. I flipped through my other projects and in a few minutes time, had eliminated all of them as potential targets for my frustrated creativity.

I closed all the projects on my laptop, stretched my back and got a banana from the kitchen. I love bananas. It's simply astounding how much inspiration a simple dose of fruit can garner. Any way, after my brief break I returned to my laptop and opened a new word file. The page, blank like a fresh canvas, was not depressing as the cluttered pages of my other projects had been. In my minds eye, I watched a small little man in a red hat introduce himself, standing on the blank page. I began to write, following him down the street as he wandered. He glanced back at me from time to time to make sure I wasn't getting distracted; he wanted his story told and it had taken him quite a large effort to be able to force his story so firmly to the front of my mind that I couldn't focus on another story until he had been given satisfaction.

Much like the good people of old Irish lore, the little man was tricky and full of mischief. If he offered anything, the one being offered to had to be wary not to take it without a specified price in place, otherwise the little man could take what he pleased. So it was while I wrote I had to keep his story in check. He wanted all sorts of embellishments, he wanted to be the hero, to be kind and daring. But I knew him for what he was, the toady little man. And so I took only what I had to from him and he was paid in full by having his story put down.

In the end, he wasn't very pleased with what I wrote, but that, I suppose, was because I only wrote the truth about him and he is, after all, a selfish and greedy sort of creature. Not at all heroic, kind or daring. He especially didn't like the ending but I had very little to do with that. It was he, after all, who made the deal with the little boy he was trying to enslave. I can hardly be to blame for the wisdom and tricky nature that's inherent in small boys.