Writer's Block

Writer’s block – the two most dreaded words in a writer’s vocabulary. Even though you have a great idea and can visualize how it will come together when you sit down with a blank page in front of you, with the curser flashing, the only think that comes out is “dsfhidhsdjhiewodfh .” You get volumes of “dlkfhlkdjornfvdoze!!!dfhhw???.”

It’s like buying the perfect tree or your yard and knowing that you want to plant it in the center of the yard and for some crazy reason you find yourself digging a hole right next to the foundation of your house – where the tree can’t possibly thrive without cracking the foundation.

My current project requires nothing but accessing my own thoughts and crafting them into a compelling narrative – the research is done, there is no remaining reporting legwork – and yet all I have is a flashing curser on a blank page.

Carving out the time to work on those labors of love – the work that has purpose and the potential of bringing real satisfaction – takes a lot of finagling. Obviously there is no guarantee that your brain will work on demand and mine has apparently turned to mush.

Oh, I can turn out columns about people I meet everyday, my grandson and why I like cemeteries, but the purposeful work remains elusive. The more I try, the less I get done and the more stressful it becomes.

It’s a story I know. A story I have lived. Actually it’s a story that explains exactly why I am paralyzed with this momentary inadequacy. It’s a story that takes the vivid color of the world around me and turns everything yellow, drenched in an incapacitating fear that defies logic. I find myself back at the yellow dress, the yellow house and places that I never imagined I would be able to remember, much less revisit or share with the rest of the world. But I am telling too much and sharing out of context.

Suffice to say – I am stuck – for now. But it is a story that will be written and rewritten and probably rewritten again before being laid open for public consumption. In the meantime, I stay in the safety of the shadows, where I have always lived – waiting for the end of the world.

Snow

I am looking over a sparking wonderland that is a blanket of stark whiteness covering the landscape. Unexpected – but beautiful nonetheless. And silent. Oddly the silence is comforting – like a gentle reassurance that all is right with the world and all the mistakes and meltdowns of the week are magically erased.

After weeks of searching for inspiration and purpose, I am surrounded and want to do nothing but pour out the words that have been packed in my brain trying to escape. The crazy dreams, memories from childhood, whisperings from Mom – a jumbled web of tangled themes that have been trying to escape lay on the edge of my consciousness ready to burst forth. The challenge is to corral them and ease them through the gate coherently. I know where to go to make this happen but being there right now isn’t an option – so it is a place I visit in my mind and imagination. I can see it – feel its pull on me – even transport myself there in my mind. I just can’t physically get there.

Archer City had a profound effect on me. It changed me. I was warned that would happen, but never believed it. I found something there I have never been able to reach and though I may have been able to create it in my subconscious, I didn’t know it existed.

The Archer City cemetery was for me what I imagine the lonely stark cabin in the woods is for writers who wish escape to coveted isolation to gather their thoughts and reign in their procrastination. Or where Duane found peace away from the madness of the big house when he started walking. I discovered this place long before I discovered Duane, but it is his landscape I wish so much to return to.

Even surrounded by cold and snow, it is the blistering heat that burns my lungs with every breath, the silent headstones that scream the existence of someone long forgotten to the jackrabbits that linger along the outlines of sunken earth and the fiery-eyed coyotes that scan terrain in the darkness that fill my senses and call me back.