Creative Block

I was reading this morning from a blog by Jeff Groins, who is a writer. In it he talks about why our problem about creative blocks are all wrong.Creative Blocks, he says, come less from a lack of ideas, as it does from being paralyzed by too many ideas.

This rings very true to me and my own experience. Here's what I know about myself - I can do almost any kind of writing pretty well. At one time or another I have written almost everything you can write - ad copy, articles, scripts, a novel, stories, proposals, web copy - the list is staggering when I look at it. But I find I am the most productive when I focus on one or two kinds of work, because when there is too much going on, I tend to splinter, and my energy and creativity and productivity is spread too thin.

This is a real danger in our world today. We are bombarded with ideas and thoughts from everywhere, the web, TV, facebook, magazines. It is hard to escape, and creative people, who love ideas, are easily trapped by it all, their energy split and split and split again. until.... nothing happens. Creative block.

I have gone from being a pretty good multitasker to a more uni-tasker. And I have been surprised by the results - I am more productive and in general, my work is better.

I have had some help recently from a pair of books.

One is Do The Work, by Stephen Pressfield, which was introduced to me by Tina Su of the Think Simple Now blog (which, by the way, may be my single most favorite blog on the planet.). This small book says, among many other helpful things, that if we are looking to do something that we should read no more than two books on it, then get to work. His thought is that we get paralyzed by research, by too many ideas.

All I can say is AMEN. I have put this idea to work and it's working.

A second resource (that's right, it has to be the last one on this topic I can read for a while) is The Power of Less, by Loe Babauta. the focus here is not so much doing less, as it is on doing more by doing less at one time.

Focus. Not letting our minds get confused and overwhelmed to the point that we can't do at all. This works for me, and as I talk to people and clients, it works for them too, when it's applied. So take a deep breath. Turn off the TV a while. Shut down the computer for a while. Don't be trying to do everything. Just stop and do one thing for a while. Just create.

Tom

Thoughts: Not exactly writer's block

I got an e-mail this weekend from one of my readers, asking if everything was OK, because there has been little new poetry over the past few weeks. The short answer is yes, I am fine, but I am suffering a mild case of writer's block.

Well, not block actually, more like overwhelmedness. Two of the non-writing, non-posting weeks were spent in Italy. Last week of course, I came back, but my mind and my heart is awhirl with thoughts and feelings I cannot quite grasp enough to even write of.

For better or worse, that is a pattern for me. I experience things and often have trouble putting words to it in the moment. I seem to have a need to process them for a time before I can deal with them well. This makes me useless in an argument - I just can't deal with the emotion and think at the same time it seems. Sort of like mental/emotionally not being able to chew gum and walk at the same time.

And that is where I have been the past few weeks. Italy and the trip there stirred all kinds of things in me, particularly the time in Venice, which sang to my spirit in a way I cannot yet, weeks later, fully quantify or explain. That is the glory of travel I think - it not just exposes you to new things, it changes you for experiencing them. Two weeks in a place gives you time to not just see sights, but to begin experiencing the pace of life, the feel of things, to soak the place into your mind and soul, to change as a result.

I am also looking at the fact that I have now been in Vermont a year. I know a year is an artificial marker of time - there is certainly nothing magical in it. Yet we humans seem to be wired to give some significance to time, and a year is a substantial time to be in a new place, particularly for someone like me who has lived in one place, Virginia, all his life.

Vermont is changing me. Relationally, creatively, spiritually, there are changes going on and again, as I look at them, they are more whirling around like vague spirits on All Hallows Eve than anything I can point to and talk to very well.

This will settle down. I am not fretting over it. I'm old enough to have experienced it before and know what's going on. It's a time to simply be still a while and let it settle down, like mud in a pond, it will settle and what's underneath will make itself clear in time.

And as it becomes clear, I will write. Writing poetry, for me, is part of the internal process. It is my beginning (only beginning) see the bottom of the pond as thing settle, my attempt to describe the shapes of things in the fog of life as they come closer.

So bear with me dear readers (and you are dear to me), and wait. The mud will settle. The fog will lift. And poetry will come.

Tom

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PS - the picture is from the tomb of the unknown soldier, in the midst of Rome. You can click on it for a larger version.