Look at your feet. No, really—look at them. That’s
disgusting. Why do you think you keep getting holes in the toes of your socks?
The blank page, that terrifying world of possibility, it can wait. That idea
you had? You’ve forgotten it already. Look
at those things. They look like troll feet. Don’t let that remind you of
anything, either. Now is not the time to write a humorous tale of a troll who
just wants those damn goats to stop stamping on his ceiling so he can sleep off
his hangover. Now is the time to clip your toenails.
Go on a walkabout.
Face it: You are in no position to write anything worth
reading. Your brain is a mess. Everyone knows that all successful writers are
completely at peace with themselves. What you need is a month—or two, or three
or four—to get away from it all. All.
Go nuts! Wander out into the wilderness in your underwear. Take various
hallucinogens. Eat poor, defenseless wildlife. Forsake all knowledge of human
speech. Just don’t, whatever you do, look within you and around you and try to
work with what you have.
Clean your room.
You can’t create under these conditions. There’s paper
everywhere, there are shoes underfoot, the books on your shelves aren’t
alphabetized and…Good lord, what is that
thing under the bed? No wonder you can’t get anything done. Put down that pen.
Step away from the keyboard. You’re not writing another word until you bring
some order to this chaos. Come to think of it, you haven’t done the dishes for
a while, either, and the toilet is getting that sewer-y smell. It all needs
doing; you might as well get it out of the way in one fell swoop. Here, have a
broom.
Go to the library and check out all the books on writing.
Writing is a craft, and you are an apprentice. You need all
the help you can get, and heaven forbid you should experiment. Don’t you know
you can come up with all kinds of unexpected things doing that? What you need
is a very dry, systematic approach to all this. If you’re having fun, you’re
probably doing something wrong. Read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style cover to cover. You should definitely read books
on writing by writers you don’t like, too. It doesn’t matter that you don’t
want to read their work. They’re published and you’re not. Copy them. The
things that are yours have not worked so far, so they must not be good for
anything.
Call home.
Maybe you need to get back to your roots. You remember the
old homestead, don’t you? Dear old Mom and Pop, maybe a sibling or five. Bare
feet, the sky and the summer. Security and possibility. Chores, laughter,
dinner at six, and conversations that lasted for hours. Silences that lasted
longer. The bickering that turned into shouting, the sharp little jabs—“What,
can’t you take a joke?” You remember. When you kept thinking it would blow
over, and then it didn’t and instead one house became two and you wafted back
and forth between them like a lost little plastic bag on the wind. You miss it,
don’t you? You got so much done then, organizing peace talks and stretching
yourself like a living bridge over the gap in a house divided against itself.
You were so productive, so happy. What you need is something to pull you back
there. Pick up the phone. It’ll do you good.
Help someone else with their writing.
If your mind is bursting with all those clever ideas and
elegant solutions, you must have so much to offer. Other people, I mean. You
should definitely drop everything and edit your friend’s feminist
interpretation of Spongebob Squarepants. After all, you are a writer, aren’t
you? You’ve been doing this for a while; you definitely can help. One could
even argue that it’s selfish to put so much time and energy into your own work.
Who are you to say your stuff is so very important? It’s not like you’re getting
much done lately anyway, even with all your agonizing. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe
it’s time to give up on the deepest wish of your heart for a while and focus on
the dreams of others.
Drown in your own insufficiency.
You might as well face it. It’s hopeless. Your house is
spotless, your feet are fabulous, you’ve had several engaging conversations
with a fir tree, your friends all seem to be talking to publishers, and you’re
stuck exactly where you were. Wordless. Nothing you can think of works and
nothing you do is good enough. Never mind your mind, or your heart. Never mind
all the things you know and all the things you have left to learn. Your problem
is very simple, and it’s not a lack of confidence or perspective. You’re just
not good enough. Give up. Don’t listen to the encouragement of people you
respect. Don’t give yourself a mental slap in the face. Don’t take a deep
breath, don’t let yourself hope, and don’t—whatever you do—sit down in front of
that blank page with steel in your spine and light in your hands. Just don’t.
Power and light never did anyone any good.
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