Writer's Block

I haven’t written in a week. My mind has stayed as blank as the page in front of me. I pick up my pen and begin to doodle in the corner, breaking in the page for when I might find actual words. Unlike actual birth (I think, I have to admit that I’m not an expert), creative birth cannot be forced in any way, it will just happen. You might just be waiting tables or cycling or tuning out of a conversation with friends when the contractions come in waves. If you’re too late to capture the idea, you will miss the birth and lose the child.

But here I am, racing on my scrap horse through Amsterdam, and in front of me, my writer’s block speeds off. I can barely make out the postcardability of the houses alongside the canals, as I peddle and pant. My only true goal is to overtake my writer’s block and beat the shit out of it. I will use its skin as a parchment to scribble a new inspiring tale on. Writer’s block ignores a red light but as I follow, cars are closing in from both sides.

But here I am, at one side of the table, with my writer’s block across from me. We might be playing poker, but I would have to google some technical terms and strategies to make the context and descriptions seem more natural, realistic. What if I do that research and an expert reads it and it turns out I was wrong about everything. Maybe if I want to describe my struggle with my writer’s block, I should choose something more up my alley?

              

               What I could write about?

1. Feminism Already wrote on several feminist topics, it’s how I profile myself. So something about a buff self-sufficient gay boy, or wait, maybe free the nipple is better. Maybe combine it with science fiction? Free your 8 nipples? Maybe a coming out story, is it memoire time? No, that is too personal to share, but then again does that not make it precisely something I should share? 
2.  . . . . . 
3.  . . . . .

3.   

I should do a literary analysis of smoking described throughout literature. Yes, instead of fiction, I’d show a more thoroughly  intellectual side of me. I’d describe what states of mind authors hide behind smoking behavior, such as anxiety, panic, carelessness or rebelliousness, and look at which words in the extensive smoking vocabulary have specific emotional connotations. When do people breathe clouds, puff away, fume, steam, fidget with their ciggie, roach, cancerstick, stub, jab, crush or toss it out? What does it say about a character if (s)he huffs a cigarette, a cigar or a joint? 

But what if analysis turns out to be boring to read? The reader might expect me to lead them to other planes of reality and existence, exposing ties and references made by other minds before me. Actually, since we live in a postmodern era, everything I analyze, write or think, has already been analyzed, written and thought before.

                              I can’t be original.

So let’s do what I did already: pick a cliché sequence of tropes and rewrite them, aware of that the writer’s profession at this point in time is reassembly rather than production. I’m a collage artist. Being an artist implies that one can turn pulp into art, but what if I turn fiction into pulp? My frame of reference is limited, everyone has their limits. As I’m just one person at a time,  how can I convey true meaning if I only follow the threads forming my own web of references, possibly unable to understand the meaning I create for others in my own writing? In other words, I can only see the world through my eyes unless someone entrusts me to see their perspective on my - or depending on how you view reality - our world. So how can I use other people’s thoughts while only perceiving a segment of their meaning, to convey my own truths to others?

Nothing comes to mind.

Maybe it’s time to seek inspiration from the quotes I collect that strike me as powerful or literarily playful; they might be a good start for at least exploring what my options for this collage are. People on social media appear to find their sense of purpose and inspiration through quotes, implying there must be some collectively understood knowledge that can be transferred in them.

My collection of quotes in my current notebook consists of:

a.      One has to remark that men ought to be well-treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves from lighter injuries, of more serious they cannot, therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.   (Machiavelli, The Prince, III)

b.      Frank had the body of a bull, an image he intensified by wearing great gold hoops through his nipples. Unfortunately he had joined the hoops with a chain of heavy gold links. The effect should have been deeply butch but in fact looked rather like the handle of a Chanel shopping bag.              (Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body)

c.      And now comes the spiritual climax of this book, for it is at this point that I, the author, am suddenly transformed by what I have done so far. This is why I had gone to Midland City: to be born again. And Chaos announced it was about to give birth to a new me by putting these words in the mouth of Rabo Karabekian: “what kind of a man would turn his daughter into an outboard motor?”              (Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 218)

Somehow it feels like these would not form a  collage that conveys one truth to the reader. What if people don’t even want to read my stories anymore? What if people do not even care for the art of the narrative anymore? The power of the narrative has recently been muddling the reader’s quest for truth. I can’t imagine how many people stopped reading fiction when we started living in a world where we already spend all day trying to distinguish truth from fable, equally presented to us as facts. 

When I see my lists, quotes and ideas codified in my own handwriting, I feel empty. I put my pen down. The cycle of temporary defeat and creative birth continues and I will have to wait, as a blank slate, to be inspired.

 I work, go to museums with my sophisticated friends, occasionally drink too much at a bar, sturdy Arabic. Enchanting photography, flat tires, afrofunk, late nights, buttshaking, cycling through the rain and forgetting to finish the food in the corner of the fridge on time. While I’m taking out the rancid trash, all synapses in my brain are firing, buzzing and zinging. It’s happening.