He sat under his favorite tree by the river, enjoying the cool late summer breeze as it passed over the water. This was HIS place - his getaway for a bit of solitude and a few minutes away from everyday distractions. Yet he sat with pencil in hand, unable to break the block. The blank page seemed to mock his inability to fill it...
A number of years ago, I was the "he" in the brief scene above. Writer's block had morphed into full-blown writer's constipation. Every project I was working on sat unfinished. The time I set aside for writing would come and go with nothing but blank pages, or maybe a few scribbled out sentence fragments. So I ventured to my favorite riverside spot, figuring it would inspire fresh work. It did not.
I arrived home dejected, and suddenly was hit with a bright idea. I would break the block by crafting a story ABOUT writer's block! Genius, right?
Umm, clearly that didn't work either, since I didn't get any farther than what you see above.
I was rummaging through some old scrap work and journal entries looking for prompts or ideas for a contest piece, and discovered the little snippet from years ago. I smiled, feeling good that I'm not suffering through the same struggle now.
Then I reflected a moment. The novel I set out to write many years ago still sits in a dusty binder, no closer to finished than it was eight years ago when I set it aside. The novel project that "replaced" it? Stormed along at a breakneck pace - then stalled. It hasn't been touched in close to a year. Frankly, the only long piece I've made progress on began its life as a 1000-1200 word short story for a contest. It quickly outgrew that, but I have no idea where it's going to end up - the story just keeps pouring out.
Meanwhile, things that I want to work on, like other contest pieces, are a battle.
Maybe I smiled too soon.
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