Writer's Block - Part I

I've recently taken the plunge and enrolled for an on-line/distance creative writing course. I know I've already produced some stuff but I need some skills so people will actually buy my books. Just the fact that I've enrolled seems to have given me the much needed kick up the proverbial backside. Hopefully now I'll be motivated to make regular contributions to my blog...here goes:

18.11.13

‘Write…just write. Write when the thoughts come and don’t worry about what arrives on the paper. Write, write the essence of the story…’

…is the thought which just came to my mind. So here I am, writing. As usual when a thought to begin the creativity comes, especially, or rather it only happens with the writing – not the poems though, there is always something to distract from the original track of thoughts. The distraction is most often enough to take me off on a tangent so I don’t actually start to write. I wonder if it’s a subconscious block or if it’s a real part of me, say the vital, which fights this particular gift of mine so it will never get to shine. Or, maybe, it’s an entity, or more than one, with the same negative intention, stifling any chance of success.

Just now, for instance, I began with a thought and wrote almost 2 pages in my head before I awoke to myself and reprimanded that ‘me’ for not taking appropriate action. I forced myself out of the chair and went to retrieve my notepad and pen. These basic instruments had been in virtually the same vicinity, together, for weeks. Yet, as I decided I needed them both – they mysteriously separated. Now, I knew that I had two black ballpoint pens yesterday, and I knew they were in my rucksack. However, despite unzipping and zipping, delving and ferreting around amongst the 2 possible pockets in which they could fit and which I knew was where I kept them, nothing materialized; except a small piece of sad looking white chalk (just in case) and the inevitable fluff balls and biscuit crumbs which always lurk in bags and pockets even if you don’t eat any biscuits – the fluff is obviously mandatory. I checked the table outside our room where we’re staying with our most patient and understanding friends while we try and sell the house so we can end our refugee status. I checked all the chairs, under the magically multiplying mound of clothes, under the bed, on the table again, in the wardrobe and then went back to the bag a second and third time. All the while I was muttering “It’s impossible, always the same, impossible. I know they’re here. I know you’re here somewhere…”On the fourth, determined rummage in the bag…another deep diving expedition, this time even more meticulously scanning the edges of the dark corners with my furtive fingers, confident now that there were no small beasties lurking there…and voila! Two pens gleefully revealed themselves at the bottom of the first place I looked! Phooey!

Even as I scribble this little distraction I desperately hold on to the line that had risen in my head, the one with which to start my prose…and all of a sudden, ‘whoosh’, a magnificent teal kingfisher mischievously swoops in and landed to dance on the roof top of the unfinished building which loomed from amongst the trees a little way away. There he swayed, twisting and turning in the early morning sunlight so that his true brilliant blueness dazzled through the sea of shimmying, whispering green cashew and neem trees in my avenue of view. A cheeky glint of yellow, a seductive sliver of red and as I giggled to myself at the audacity of it all…poof, he was gone, taking his long, strong shoe horn of a beak with him. Me, I was left scribbling feverously, still trying to keep the original storyline in my peripheral vision and in parallel wondering if at all I should still be in the mood to start that new story today or whether I should simply add the note of the storyline and the characters to the ever growing list of scenarios…I wondered if the electricity had returned too, so I could have my morning elixir and reprimand myself at the untidiness of my hand writing, which no-one else but me would probably ever be able to decipher.

I must print out all the typed up pages of all my notes (just in case).

Have a beautiful day!

Love Louise x