There's been a lot of ink expend- ed on
the joys of writing, on the fears of writer's block, on the writing
life and on all things writers, but there is one topic that I have
not seen, and I don't know if it has been addressed in regards to
writers or not. It can be misinterpreted as writer's block, but it's
something more insidious. It's called writer's doldrums.
What? You never head of it? It's when
you have stuff to write. You have your essays, your short stories,
your novel, your blog entry, and you don't feel like writing any one
of them. You feel like your life is not about writing them, going
over them, editing them. In fact, you don't feel like writing
anything, not even a letter to your mom. You want to write nothing.
I have a trilogy to finish, and I'm on
the third book. How the other two came to life is beyond me. I've
written it in a white hot heat of creativity. Strange, life was
breathed into two of the books without effort. I had a lot to say,
and it came out like an vomination. But halfway into the third book,
I drained out. I got tired and I drained out. There is nothing left
inside and my drive has withered away. I have other things to write,
but none of them feel as important to do as my third novel. So,
everything slumps. It's as if my third novel is an obstruction in the
colon.
So now I don't feel like writing. I
don't feel like writing anything. And I know what you are thinking:
If I tried to write something, anything, I just might free my
creativity to go ahead and finish my novel. But that won't work.
Simple as that. Why do I say this? Because I am writing this blog
entry and I haven't the drive to much do that. I'm only dragging ass
to get through this. I'm not feeling it, but because it's a near
enough, ardent enough feeling, I felt that writing it now would be a good
thing. I can be close to the emotions and place them down on paper as
accurately as possible.
Writer's doldrums. A state of being
where you are simply not in the mood to write anything. You look at
what you've written and it seems trite and boring. You can breathe no
life into anything. All of your work and doing is pointless because
it seems so wrong. So as your only option, you chose to do nothing
until it passes. Whatever the case, you do nothing.
So how do you reverse this? How do you
get out of the doldrums and back into productive creativity? You
can't. Just like writer's block, that leads to a Sargasso Sea of
nothingness, you have a painful road of busted glass and sharp, rusty
objects to traverse. Something not easily done. So what do you want
me to tell you? I have nothing to say. I can't see a way out of the
doldrums. I can see no options other than to ride it out. This blog
may seem to be an instructional, and I may seem to speak as if I know
what I'm talking about and have all of the answers but the truth is
is that I don't have anything to give but my limited experiences. I
am one human with one life and that doesn't account for much.
So, I'm stopping to write this blog
post, hoping to start a spark, or to place a fire under my ass. But
I'm grinding to the end of this post and I feel exactly the same,
uninspired. I have no desire to write any further, and because of
this feeling, I know that the doldrums will still go on.
If I find a way out, I'll let you know
in some later post. Till then, as long as you can, keep writing.
Gregory
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