Writer's block (revisited)

I explore this a lot. This idea, this belief. I've argued with some who believe that writer's block does not exist. I believe it does, in some way, but it's what you do with the "block" that determines if the time off from writing was positive or negative. I think it's all about perception and frame of reference.

Outside of the two poems I wrote this week in rapid succession (Tuesday and Wednesday), I went several months without writing a poem. Now, this is significant for someone who rallies the troops for week-long poetry-writing challenges, or took three months off last summer just to write, and came out with 90 poems...so you see, to go several months without writing a poem could be considered writer's block.

I don't think I considered it a block as much as I considered it a Winter season of my writing. This is, of course, thinking in retrospect, and finding that the words come when they're ready, just as the buds come back to the bare limbs of the trees, and the flowers begin to sprout from the soil. (I assume. There is little soil here in NYC) What I did do during those months, however, was a lot of reading and preparing. Last year I wrote a first draft of a novel just because I had decided that I wanted to know what writing a novel felt like. Once I finished the draft, I was encouraged by some friends to think about next steps. I read this book, "the Artful Edit" and decided that I was excited to get the first draft done, b/c then I could begin editing, and watch it evolve into a real thing, perhaps a real book. So then I read a lot of other books --I spent 3 weeks in South Carolina during those months, and I also woke up every morning to read -- about drafting and editing novels. I bought these books about writing....and it felt kind of like a productive procrastination. Like, I wasn't writing, but I felt all right about it, b/c I was reading and meditating and thinking about writing.

I have noticed, though, that my writing productivity changes when my schedule changes. And my schedule has been afloat for the past couple of months as well. And not only that, a lot of things that were a constant in my life: Monday's = poetry reading, Wednesday = cupcake and jazz, Thursday = Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, have been a bit disrupted, and so I find that my productivity is most comfortable in stable pockets of time. Like, I knew that I could write when I went to the Jazz spot on Wednesdays, or get some inspiration from the poetry readings on Mondays. So it's no surprise when some semblance of that balance came back to me this week with a poetry reading/conversation and a Jazz show, and I produced two poems on those days. You have to feed the muse in order for her to work for you. I guess that's my take home idea with reference to writer's block. The more creative energy I have around me, in the air, in the atmosphere....the more inclined I am to write.