The Writing Group (TWG)

I find myself recently, in a drought of sorts. It is a place where nothing comes to me. I try to write, but the page remains blank.

In this struggle, I have taken a book from my shelf entitled "The Sound of Paper" by Julia Cameron. Throughout this book, she offers exercises and much encouragement for those of us who love to write, yet find ourselves unable to pen the words.

Should any of you be in my current predicament, perhaps it will be helpful as I share an excerpt from her above mentioned work:

"Sometimes in our creative careers we are seized by a sickening rebellion. We think, "I simply cannot keep on with keeping on," and so we skid to a halt. The halt becomes like the drought, daily taking a deeper hold on our psyches until we're defined by the absence of work, just as a drought is defined by the absence of water.

The only way out of drought is rains, which will come when God or providence declares it should. The only way out of a creative drought is through our own hand, and that we have some slight measure of power over.

We can take to the page and write, "I am not working. I hate working and I have no ideas left". That is like a prayer for rain. It moves the heavens somehow.

In times of creative drought, the only solution is to keep putting one foot in front of the others, to keep on slogging creatively, keep moving toward a distant horizon. We are like people crossing a vast desert. Water lies ahead and not behind. It lies in our future and not in our present. We must keep moving because all droughts end. The parched earth is slaked by rain, and the parched creative spirit is slaked, too, when the long months of forced work give way suddenly to the verdant flowering of inspiration."

She does, indeed, inspire me.