Writer's block

and other mixed metaphors

I don’t believe in ‘writer’s block’ – I think it’s a bunch of nonsense. Writing is a process not a product and my own experience is that writing is going on all the time … somewhere in the noticing and imagining and dreaming. It doesn’t have to come out in words all the time. So-called ‘block’ is usually an indication that you need to defer to something deeper, to allow it to ferment and rise when it’s ready. Writing has its seasons – I know from my own practice that dormancy and rest is equally important as periods of germination, growth and harvest.

Nevertheless, I have this creeping feeling at the moment that I will never write another poem ever again. As if I’m some kind of actor in some kind of film about trains and I’m standing on the platform while the poetry world rushes bewilderingly by and I’m left behind.

I’ve been on that platform before.

Last year after my first collection Red Handed came out, I felt a lot like this. Wordless. Clueless about how to put a poem together, how to pack the right things into my poetry suitcase and jump on that poetry choo choo train again – see, I can’t even sustain the metaphor right now. (It is a terrible metaphor, I think we can all agree on that).

I was doing a lot of readings – performing, travelling, meeting new people, becoming part of communities I hadn’t encountered before. I loved it. It’s the best thing about poetry, the community. There is something about the energy needed to project work into the world and to receive and return the conversations those performances provoke that requires almost a closing off of the quiet reflective spaces inside of me. The places where I create (it’s no coincidence that my favourite place to write is the boffice, aka bed-office). This time in the life of the book feels like a kind of tending, a nurturing of all the seeds that were sown in the collection that are now flourishing. It’s essential.

These past few months have been similarly out there in energetic terms, reading at festivals, launching my new pamphlet FOREST into the world and putting a book proposal together for a nonfiction project. There have been words – nonfiction is sold on a proposal basis so I’ve spent the past month immersed in the synopsis and sample chapters, getting my shiny stall of alluring wares together that I can send to agents and publishers. But there have been no poems. Or only terrible, moronic, gut-clenchingly embarrassing ones.

Ghost train, fallow period, call it what you will.

But writing is never only about actual writing. While we may all have different practices and processes – a cup of whisky at 10.03am, only writing in service stations off the M1 corridor, running 10km before putting pen to paper, doing a hundred box jumps before sitting at the desk – the necessity of noticing, practicing attention, being in relationship with the world in whatever way, surely unites all writers in the ways we gather the material that feeds into the later work. The idea of writer’s block implies that there is only one road to a poem / story / essay / article and that the way is closed, when really we should know by now that creativity takes many routes and forms and speeds, from the twelve lane urban superhighway to the ancient ambling trackways that braid our rural landscapes.

So. If you’re feeling like you Just Can’t Write at the moment, here are some things you can do that are practically writing without putting any words on the page. I am basically writing this for myself to look at next time I feel ‘so-called blocked.’

Go for a walk. Yes. Ye olde classic. If you’re stuck on a problem you can’t get past in the work, a stroll – or movement of any kind: dance, yoga, running, cycling, ice skating, mountaineering, coasteering, bungee jumping, skydiving, etc – will for sure help you come unstuck. I do my best ‘writing’ while walking. Take a phone, record voice notes, make videos, take pictures.

Go see some art. Or a film. Or head to a museum, no matter how local and slightly crap. Experiences that privilege the visual and haptic stimulate words because of the ways they speak in languages of emotion, metaphor and perception – in the way a Polar exhibit is curated, how the artist makes a bowl of strawberries stand for forbidden desire. They share space with poetry in the realm of the ineffable.

Read, read, read, read. In many ways, this is the most important act of care you can do for your writerly self. You are probably a writer because you love reading. Or at least I hope you are. I never understand it when people get competitive and envious of other writers for getting published or achieving an accolade because I LOVE stories (in whatever form they come - poems, novels, street art, film, and so on) and the more stories the better, I say. The more great stories there are, the more great reading material there is. Yay, right? Reading is not only one of life’s great pleasures in its own right, it’s also essential fertiliser for your writerly garden. Also, knowing the lay of the land in the genre / form you’re working in helps you to understand where to place your work (and thus increase the likelihood of acceptance / publication). Reading outside of your usual genre / form can be a shot in the arm that wakes your writing back up again.

Allow yourself to write badly. Perfection is the thief of creativity. If you feel like a shaken-up bottle of Kylie Prosecco then go for it, shoot your load on the page. Just don’t judge yourself for it afterwards. There are no walks of shame here, only strides of pride.

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Eavesdrop. Go to a café, shopping centre, bus stop, whatever, and listen to what people are saying. Gather the fragments. Take notes on your phone. Save them for later. Nothing is ever wasted.

Edit. If you can’t let the words lie, then go back to old pieces of work that you didn’t finish with fresh eyes and see if you can identify where the tweaks are needed to make them sing. You never know, there might be a prize-winning poem lurking on your cloud that just needs a few edits.

Shift the mode. There’s nothing like trying to draw, paint, sculpt, make ceramics, knit, mend, collage, sew something really badly to remind you that you’re actually quite good at writing after all.

And finally (note to self, as much as anyone) – BE PATIENT. Getting stressed and anxious about not writing is never going to help you get back to the page. If anything, it makes it worse. Remember, we live in a world that demands constant productivity and output. Don’t get caught in the maelstrom. Remind the rebel in you that rest is an act of resistance, that patience is a creative strategy and a form of care. Recognise that patience builds trust in the process which is all we really have in the end. Eventually, the pause will be the prompt.