|
Funny.
When I'm having difficulty writing it's usually because I'm in a mental rut. When I'm in a position to write what I want, when I want, as it pops into my brain and sends everything else out to restock the fridge, I'm fine: an essay here, a review there, a godawful wreck of a poem in between.
What screws me up is when there's something specific I really SHOULD be working on. Even if it's something I can sleep through (and trust my nose to hit the right keys), the moment it becomes an obligation, it becomes a problem. The keyboard feels wrong, the pen seems too big, and all I can think about is how I can't think about what I need to be thinking about.
The best trick I've found for dealing with that is to simply run with it. If I can't seem to write, I'll write about how I can't write. I'll let myself go, let the structure fall apart, the metaphors get silly, the prose go to hell, and before I know it I'll stop dead in the middle of a line because the thing I needed to be working on is half-written in my head.
As far as inspiration goes, I like going with the gut. Something that grabs me, something that hits me, something that gets my attention is probably something worth writing about. If I see or hear something that pisses me off, it's something to write about. If something pops into my head when I'm sitting up alone at night, something that scares me, unsettles me, and makes me wish my wife was awake so she could make the feeling go away... hell, that's DEFINITELY worth writing about.
I think part of the reason that some people have difficulty writing (i.e. difficulty believing they have something to write about) is our natural tendancy to avoid. Whether it's pain, passion, or trust, there are experiences we'd rather not deal with, and by the time we're old enough to talk about them we've learned dozens of ways to NOT talk about them. Video games, movies, idle conversation, obsessively baking cookies: lots of little tricks, plenty of loopholes.
If I'm just dry on ideas, there's usually something I can STOP doing to get them flowing. If nothing else, a day or two without a cigarette rattles my cage enough to get something started, even if it's just catching up on dishes =P
|