Breaking the block

It happens more often than I'd like that I wake up on a Thursday morning and realize that I once again forgot to come up with a blog post. Well, I may have some bad tomato karma (up yours, fusilium crown and root rot), but apparently the gods of blogging are smiling on me, because today I found this post on how successful writers deal with writer's block.

I've read some of the advice in the article before - taking a walk often works for minor writer's block for me - but I hadn't thought of this one piece of advice from a  New Yorker writer:

"A thing I do, if writing isn’t going well, is to write out something I really love, like one of Keats’ odes or a bit of a poem by Elizabeth Bishop or even a few sentences from Woolf or the Gospel of John. It’s nice to remember what can be done with words always but especially when it seems like you can’t seem to do anything with them."

I've gone through writer's block. It was during a rather dark period of my life overall, and I don't really like to think about it all that much. In my case, the solution was to just start writing something silly – a story that I liked, but I had no interest in ever publishing. And I never did publish it, and I never finished it. It was some silly thing with like twelve main characters. And by the time I finished writing the outline and the character profiles, I got bored with both that story and over the idea that I couldn't write, and was able to move on to other things.

More recently, I've learned that the first step to confronting any fear, is to bring it out and treat it to the bright light of day. It's kind of amazing how frail and weak those long-held fears can seem once we gain the courage to actual air them out.

My writing fears want me to know that I've never written anything good in my life, that no one will ever like what I write, and that I'm not going to have a good time working on my writing tonight.

And really, when I look at those words on their own, my writer's block is kind of a whiny jerk, and not interesting or powerful at all. That's not to say that I won't forget this next time I become insecure, because long-learned fears aren't so easily rooted out.

#492652795 / gettyimages.com

What ridiculous things does your writer's block try to tell you?

Motivation for the Dog Days of Summer

In my little corner of the United States, even the nicest houses don't usually come equipped with the most important invention of modern times--central air. People surmise that it just doesn't get hot enough for long enough to make that kind of investment. But, oh, global warming...look what you have done!

The heat and humidity rot my brain. They make my arms so heavy that moving them takes all my concentration. I yearn to sit on the couch and stare into space. If I am feeling particularly motivated, I might find the energy to imagine I am sitting in a snowstorm. But not by August. Early August is the bane of my existence. My kids are going to start school soon, and  I long to want to play with them. My house and other responsibilities have suffered from my lack of energy for so long that I am riddled with guilt and self-recrimination. There is produce to can (though I'm successfully ignoring that fact this year) but adding to both the heat and humidity levels in the house seems nearly suicidal.

And so, this time of year often seems more like a time of new beginnings to me than spring does. Like a phoenix I am ready to rise from the ashes of summer and begin again. I'm just waiting for the burning to stop.

Meanwhile, I stumbled across this quote:

"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively.

 "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." (from Trina Paules, Hope For The Flowers)

It was just the right moment for that thought to enter my brain. With the hope that I am not the only person who needs a pep talk here in the dog days of summer, here are a few more powerful quotes for you:

• "Often, out of periods of losing come the greatest strivings toward a new winning streak." (Mr. Rogers)

• "Who is mature enough for offspring before the off-spring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults. " (Peter De Vries)

·       "Transitions are almost always signs of growth, but they can bring feelings of loss. To get somewhere new, we may have to leave somewhere else behind." (Mr. Rogers)

·       "There are times all during life when we need the inner resources to keep ourselves busy and productive all by ourselves." (Mr. Rogers)

·       "You can never solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created the problem in the first place." (Albert Einstein)

·       "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." (Aristotle)

·        "Imagining something may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions."(Mr. Rogers. Again)

·        "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." (James Dean)

·       "We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work." (Thomas Edison)

·        “When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.” (Boris Pasternak)

• “Sometimes opportunities float right past your nose. Work hard, apply yourself, and be ready. When an opportunity comes you can grab it.” (Julie Andrews)
  
  
• "Someone once told me that we move when it becomes less painful than staying where we are." (Anne Hines, The Spiral Garden)

·        "Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential."  (Winston Churchill)

• "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." (Leo Buscaglia)

·       "The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead."  (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)