Writers' Block: Are We Having Fun Yet?© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
In which we discuss that moment in your life when you're sitting
at the kitchen table at three-twenty-seven in the morning with a
cup of coffee that once might have tasted like something other than
toxic waste but that now would make drinking from Love Canal back
in the 60's preferable; when you've bitten the head off of every
human being who has dared to breathe loudly in your presence for
the past week; when the sound of fingers on keys (or even the scritch
of a pen on paper) makes you want to weep; when any inspiration
you ever had is now dead and mummified and collecting dust in the
corner; when you don't remember the last time you strung three words
together that were recognizably English; and you haven't written.
You haven't written.
Those words start to loom after a while, don't they? "I haven't
written." What they mean is "I'm worthless, I'm talentless, I have
nothing to say and even if I did no one would want to listen, I
don't know why I think I can do this, and I don't think I want to
and I just can't stop. And you don't have to be writing full-time
---and counting on making your deadline in order to make the rent---for
those three words from Hell to pound through your brain with the
awful portent of Poe's narrator's telltale heart.
"I haven't written."
Well, maybe I know why you haven't. When is the last time you
had fun while you were writing? When is the last time you made yourself
laugh---when did your characters last do something that was both
outrageous and perfectly right, when did your lead rip out a zinger
of a come-back that you would have given your left arm for when
you had that argument last month? When did you last say,
"To hell with literary immortality" and just allow the words to
hit the paper without regard for their beauty or their perfection
or their odds of winning you a Pulitzer or at least the local newspaper
contest? When did you last write just because you loved to write?
When I was a kid, I loved to run. And I was fast. My best friend
Laura Leonhard and I invented a game in first grade that we gave
the original name of "Steal Hat". On the playground, we would swipe
Mark McMath's brown corduroy hat with the earflaps and then we'd
run like hell with it. I was usually the instigator of the game,
because I was the one with the crush on Mark. I'd run until I got
tired or until the streaming trail of kids pounding after me in
gleeful pursuit managed to corner me, and then I'd throw the hat
to Laura. Laura would run until the masses headed her off, and then
she'd throw the hat back to me. We were the two fastest runners
in the first grade, and nobody ever caught us. We didn't give the
hat back until the recess bell rang and we had to go in, or until
a teacher realized that we (both blonde, hazel-eyed, and entirely
too angelic-looking) were the culprits instigating the screaming
mobs of children that streamed like herds of really loud buffalo
from one end of the playground to the other.
Christ. It was like flying. Feet pounding, legs and arms pumping,
lungs going like bellows, and always in the lead. Always free, ahead
of the pack, with the clear ground in front of me and triumph in
my heart---and that damned brown hat clutched in my fist, symbol
of my wild first-grade passion and Mark's unending frustration.
I was weightless, soaring; I was the antelope and the gazelle and
I was immortal.
Running felt like that to me until the day I showed up for track
practice my freshman year of high school. God, I was excited. I
was finally, finally old enough that I could be in track. And then
I found out about starting blocks, and form, and drills. I found
out that I was doing everything wrong. Some girl two grades ahead
of me absolutely blew my doors off in tryouts. The immortal in me
died that day. I could still outrun every guy I knew. I was still
damned fast. But there on the cinder track, eating the dust of a
runner who knew how to use blocks and who was a competitor, I could
no longer fly. My wings clipped, my feet turned to lead, I went
home almost in tears because I hadn't known I'd been doing everything
wrong. All my life, I'd been doing everything wrong. I started doing
the drills. I practiced the starts from home-made blocks. I had
my little brother time me, and run with me. And then, with the magic
dead inside of me and the joy gone, I dropped out of track and I
stopped running.
Every once in a while, when I was running to catch the mailman,
or running across a parking lot after a letter caught in a high
wind, a little twinge of that old hunger would well up inside of
me. I would be, for just an instant, on the verge of lifting off.
Half a second from airborne, three steps from once again joining
the immortals. And then the voices of my past and the pain of my
hard-earned lessons would bring me back to earth. Knees up! Elbows
in! Eyes forward and keep your head up! Lift those feet! I'm amazed
you can walk across a street, much less run! Do you call that running?
And the magic would die back.
You started writing because you loved to write. You loved to tell
stories. You wanted to let your mind run. And somewhere along the
way, unless I miss my guess, some coach told you that you were doing
it all wrong. Wrong grammar. Wrong style. Wrong subject matter.
Somebody who had been doing it for a while blew your doors off,
and you looked at him, and you listened to that coach, and you started
giving up the part of you that loved to run because that part of
you didn't run right. You were trying to be some other writer, someone
who was already out there doing what you wanted to be doing, because
all of a sudden you realized that you weren't good enough. You got
so caught up in doing it right that you lost sight of why the hell
you were doing it in the first place.
Remember why you were doing it in the first place? Because while
you were writing, you could fly. You could do magic. You were one
of the immortals---and, dammit, isn't being one of the immortals
heady stuff? Remember? You have written because of love, and you
know what that blood-pulsing, heart-pounding, adrenalin-high, I-can-do-anything
rush is all about. You know.
Yes, if you're going to write professionally, you do have to spell
the words right. Yes, you do have to be able to make your sentences
make sense. And you'll have to learn to type (or pay someone an
awful lot of money to do it for you) if you want to be a professional.
But writing cannot be about going pro. It has to be about writing---first,
last and always. Being a pro is a benefit you get from doing what
you love every day---if you hated to write, why would you want to
do something so hard?
Shake off the coach and the competitors. Forget about the race
for a while---sooner or later if you aren't writing for love, you're
not going to write at all. Kiss off the compulsion to be Hemingway---Hemingway
is dead, and so, for that matter, are Shakespeare and Faulkner and
Capote. They've run their races, they're out of the game, and the
game has changed. You can't compete with them. You can't, for that
matter, compete with me. I am the only person in the world who can
write my books. I'm the only writer who can compete with me, and
you are the only one who can compete with you, and as long as you
keep that truth in mind, you will be able to find your way back
to the place where you can fly. You will find the part of you that
has something to say. You will find the story that is yours to tell,
and to hell with the person who says you aren't telling it right.
It's your story, isn't it? If you don't tell it your way, it simply
won't get told. Cut loose. Have fun. Run, and find the immortal.
It's still there inside of you.
Have you ever lost your wings? Did you ever get them back?
Writers' Block: Losing -- and Regaining --
Writer's Hunger>>
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