Keep the Passion Going

Writers hearts lend themselves to any emotion drifting in on drama winds. We allow our personal traumas, or perceived traumas, to control key aspects of our lives, like our fingers, for instance.

We should sit behind our glowing monitors, slapping out letters like Babe Ruth on steroids, creating base hits, doubles, triples and the occasional homeruns, but all too often we mope about, derelict wanderers sailing the white-screen waters of oblivion.

Have you ever slumped into your writing chair, fired up all the components of your craft and felt like drowning in electronic white-out? (Younger folks - never mind...).

The writer's freeze deserted me years ago when I learned the simple way out of that particular dilemma. Simple, but like anything else in life, not as easy as one would hope. How do you escape the 'white zone'?

Write through it. Are we writers or are we cowards? Often writers appear to fear the corrupt and otherwise disorderly sentence. We cringe at the thought that crap emerges from our fingertips, yet emerge it does.

Writer's block exists as an excuse for writers to flee their craft. Why would a writer do that? Fear. Laziness. Low self-esteem. Anxiety. Sex. (Ok, I'll buy into that last one...)

'Writing the muse' tosses a writer's heart off a high mountain ledge with our keystrokes wings keeping us aloft. We soar and dip and thermal and flip and joyfully glee in all we write.

Somehow eventually we lose control, the muse flits to some other bird and we flounder about more like a fish on concrete than that eagle so majestic. Writer's block rears its foolish head playing tricks on our minds, convincing us we own no talent nor do we command any brilliance.

And we listen. We should stuff our ears with cotton prose and blather like a child ignoring a sibling. We should run as far as our nimble fingers can key us, to a land we create in the very face of such an enemy. We should spite the block AND the muse.

Amazing as this may sound, the block and the muse occupy the offices of both ally and foe. The block as a foe stands apparent, but as an ally, the block can inspire. When writers become blocked, they can use the situation as a call to free-write - to step away from tedium and simply write their mind as it flies hither and yon. The block can whisk you away to exotic places, dark intimacies or violent passions.

The muse as foe? I hear you saying I'm nuts. Writers rely on this Tinkerbell too much. The muse wows us with her divine presence, then leaves our sails flat and windless at her whim. We then either sulk through our white writing ocean going nowhere, or we begin blowing on our own sails. We rig an oar out of discarded pens and pencils and flee yet again to the free-write where anything goes.

The muse will not keep our passions flowing. The block cannot stop them. Once a writer understands he or she has complete control, both the muse and the block become allies we can rely upon. Our passions then rely on the one person they should - us.

Writing is Life

Writing is life. Writing extracts that which darkens our souls and lends light to those blackened remnants of our passions. Without writing we go postal. Without writing we go psychotic. Without writing we visit counsellors, psychiatrists, priests and confidantes.

Life should be experienced from the inside. We should learn to describe our world and emotions from an internal perspective - not the external emotional bloodbath of movies, television, books and the like. We desperately search out kindred feelings but we're unable to express that which lies deep within us.

Writing teaches us to reach down, to grab a handful of the hodge-podge trapped within and release it to the wind. Who cares if anyone reads? Who cares if only the electrons check out your sad state of affairs. Once these vile gases leak out, the pressure within diminishes. Freedom then springs upon us like a flower in May. Beautiful change and silken laughter become available to us once again.

All because we care enough for ourselves to write. Write it down people. Get it out. Save yourself.