F*** You, Writer's Block!: Do I Need To Be in Pain to Be a Poet?
- Willow Williams
- Jul 18, 2024
- 4 min read
Writer's block. It happens to every writer at some point. A blank page is intimidating. The pressure to fill it up with something meaningful is legit. Writer's block keeps writers up at night, distracts us from people and things we love, makes us irritable and sometimes angry, keeps us from living and enjoying life, and makes us feel inadequate, stupid, and like bad, useless artists.
I speak from personal experience. No Googling or research required here.
In full-on fear of jinxing myself, I will say these articles come relatively easily. Creatives are a superstitious lot, though. I crossed my fingers, said 7 Hail Marys, burned some sage, and threw salt over my shoulder as I wrote that. Any other jinx-proofing recommendations are welcome.
It's my poetry I feel like I'm in a slump with. None of my recent poems feel like they are any good. They're pedestrian and boring, cliche and trite, dumb and lame. I lack imagination, passion, vision, and creativity. In short, I suck.
And of course, none of that is true. I know that logically; that's just how it feels. And not all of my poems are going to be good. Most are clunkers. It's numbers game to find the golden phrase or analogy. This is not news to me.
So why do I feel this way? I was on a goddamn fucking poetry ROLL in April, May, and the first half of June. What's the difference now, mid-July?
Well, the difference is obvious. DUH. This spring, I went through an extreme personal hell. I was in so much pain that to hold it in would've killed me. It had to get it out of me, so I wrote it out. I wrote and wrote and wrote. And it helped tremendously. Now, most of my days are good. I've learned a ton about myself and what I want and don't want, and I'm looking forward to life again.
So that begs the question, do I need to be in pain to be a poet?
Sure as fuck feels like it. Even applying logic to that statement, of course you don't need to be in pain to be a poet!, feels like a betrayal, like it cheapens poetry somehow. Poetry isn't logical. Poetry is feelings and whimsy and innuendo and grit and deeply meaningful and…! There's no logic in poetry!
Oh, but there is, my dear. There is!
During the spring, I was trying to make sense of my pain so I could heal, so I wrote. That is not a pain I want to feel ever again. That seems logical to me. Something a rational person would do, yes?
Poetry has many logical forms as well. Most people know the 5, 7, 5 syllable Haiku from high school lit class. But did you know the Korean version, a sijo, has 3 lines of 14-16 syllables each and is required to have two divided clauses with a twist for the third line? Here's an example, https://allpoetry.com/poem/17810410-economy-by-Adnama17. There's iambec pentameter as well, thank you Chaucer. I also have to consider rhyme and rhythm schemes, and I count syllables, all of which are the definition of logic.
I'd best stop geeking out here or I will lose my lovely audience. You're welcome!
And as I look at how I write poetry, I am very deliberate. For example, I misuse and misspell words on purpose. I live in a thesaurus to drill down into the exact meaning I am looking for. I research, research, research. In a poem from this spring, I used the phrase "waiting for the other shoe to drop." Well, that got me thinking about the etymology of that phrase. Where did it come from? The origin is actually quite interesting. You can read that poem and an explanation of that phrase here: https://allpoetry.com/poem/17794337-the-other-shoe-by-Adnama17.
Even the ways I keep my creativity flowing are logical. I use prompts. Good Friend T does (almost) a prompt a day on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=the%20almost%20daily%20writing%20prompt. I've used a random word generator, paint color names, ingredients on a box, and even asked someone the color of the shirt they are wearing and what they had for lunch to prompt myself. Most recently, I went around the table at my Saturday morning coffee group and ask everyone to give me a word. Then I used all those words, officially termed a word bank, to write a poem.
My most favoritest way to keep creative is a time limit. I learned this from an online song writing challenge I've taken part in since 2015 called FAWM, or February Album Writing Month. The idea is to write 14 songs in 28 days during the month of February, essentially a song every other day, and at the end of the month you'll have an album's worth of songs. Woo hoo! And there are these fun little events called skirmishes that entail writing AND recording a song in an hour. It sounds crazy, but it is possible! Both the monthly and skirmish time limits force my brain to be creative. It takes my overthinking and judgement of what I'm writing away from me so things will just flow. I apply this time limit idea every morning as I am not an early riser, but I've found if I start my day off with thirty minutes of writing poetry, I have a much better day. Go figure!
The conclusion is, pain is not required to be a talented poet. WHEW! Thank the universe, all the gods ever invented, and the pencils with snowmen on them I use to write all my poems. That's not superstitious. It's science. They write better because the lead is mixed with melted snow. Well, that's what I tell myself, so I don't feel silly being so weird about pencils.
Don't just take my word for it. Here's a great article about overcoming writers block: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-writers-block-how-to-overcome-writers-block-with-step-by-step-guide-and-writing-exercises#6sUHLi9VvJdBHrup3Hgr3k
Check out FAWM here: fawm.org
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