Posted: Feb 18, 08 5:41pm

Writer's Block

I am not the authority on writer's block. I don't believe there is such a thing. The term makes it sound like some horrific external force impedes us from our quest.

There are, however, psychological states in which we block our own creativity by taking something that should be a natural process and trying to make it happen. Creativity flows from an unconscious stream within us. All of us have that facility built into our makeup. The difference between Steven King, Erica Jung and Sylvia Plath is the substance of the life experiences and targets of conscious imagination from which their creative drives pulls information and the chemical makeup of their brain that changes the way they process differential information.

I believe we are born a combination of tabula rasa - blank slate - and font of eternal information genetic inheritance. This is a nurture/nature combination that makes each of us unique and at the same time, similar to all other people. We are coded with a system of base knowledge of how to deal with situations. This is the preservation of the species at work despite a highly differentiated world in which we live. The same fate that awaited Ug, the caveman, awaits us. There is really little difference between getting stomped by a dinosaur and getting crowned by a planter that dropped from a 45th floor ledge.

To write from the inner self, you have to let go. You can't command it to function but there are several mental tricks that serve as the open sesame command or abra cadabra releasing the steel door between the inner and outer selves.

Freud discovered one of the tools that serves to release the inner self: Word association. His command of the tool was, at best, primitive. Words: to the intellect a picture; to the inner mind, a key allowing contact with the outer world.

To a writer, word association is the process of writing without thinking. Each word brings the next one. Each sentence forms an idea which commands further exploration. You open your imagination.

That is why I always emphasize that when you begin to write anything new, the first writing is blowing the detritus out of the pipes. The real writing begins a sentence or a page or two later after you are able to make instantaneous connections to the inner mind which contains all the confabulations you own. You will always find that after you write something in this manner, you are awed by the fact that when you read it, you are seeing it for the first time. You have no idea what you just wrote.

The real struggle is to stop struggling and allow writing to happen. Start with a blank slate. Create a simple situation and a first character to populate the still-blank scene. Name the character. You will be surprised how often the name is an internal clue as to the character's . . . character, personality, and role in the world.

Most writers do not name their characters after-the-fact. The name emerges without their knowing why. You can always change it later. Often, it is so on target that you begin to believe that you thought it up with your conscious mind.

The most appropriate name for a character in the history of writing was Oliver Twist. I wonder if Dickens allowed that name to happen. I would bet the answer is yes.

Names are excellent means of creating an opening in your mind for creativity. That is why I always excoriate the writers of pieces who use pronouns he, she or it as their “name” for their protagonist. There is no imagination in any of the three dead words. See which gives you a better picture and deeper expectations:

She sat at the bar sipping her drink.

Temperance P. Furie sat at the bar sipping her drink.

Of course, once I write that simple sentence, my mind starts racing. I didn't think about the name at all. Some inner voice told me to use it. Just imagine: Temperance, of course, means doesn't drink alcohol. Fur(y)ie is self-explanatory. Her name creates a postulate of paradoxes. It allows my conscious mind to begin contemplating scenarios in which the lady might find herself. Twisted love story? Murder most foul? Possibilities?

There are some writers, and I include myself in that sub-group, to whom writing is a calling. To not write creates pain that is, at times, physical. I would like to hear from others who experience this phenomenon.

When I write something that contains elements of the unplanned, it is as if I am gestating a long-standing pregnancy. I didn't have a need to get published; before the first time, I never considered that I had the talent to join that element of the writing club. I caught the fever after seeing my name in print for the first time -- it was a byline in a newspaper editorial. For three years, weekly, I saw that boldface, 16 point, 12 pitch line between the headline and the article. I came to regard it as something important to me and began looking for outlets other than newspapers where I could attain published status. That part is very conscious and feeds a need that already exists by creating an artificial but pleasant reward.

I can hear my voice when I write. I can hear the changes as I create characters. That came as natural to me as yawning or farting. I am a former professional actor and though admittedly, it is a skill I put away early in life, it is one that allows my characters to have added definition and my scenes to be like playlets, complete with grand entrances and exits, stage left . . . laughing hysterically.

I wish I had the command of words some other writers have. I wish I had the eye for detail which in my life I have no care about. If I sit in it, it's a chair. If I wear it around my neck, it's a necktie . . . or a noose in some of my crazier stories. I don't care what color, what material or how expensive. I don't know a cheap red wine from a cask of amontillado. Food is for sustenance and a snail is a snail.

My stories focus on the characters. I leave them essentially naked and you can dress them as you please. The room is only a prop and I allow you to paint the colors and distribute the fabrics.

If I do my job properly, the reader has a better opportunity to play with those elements that I ever could and it doesn't distract from the texture of the story. I draw an outline. She paints by numbers.

After going through all that psychobabble, after you get an idea and run with it, you must then forget all about imagination and craft the words into a readable story. The inner mind takes shortcuts with ideas as I take shortcuts with descriptions of clothing, decorations and food.

Rather than telling you what it looks like, I prefer to show you what I can do with it. For instance, if I write a seduction scene, I don't feel it is as important to describe the clothing on the protagonists as it is to shape the manner in which they divest each other of the impediments to the real object of the reader's interest -- and mine, for that matter. I may spend a page struggling with the clasp on a bra and not a word about the color of it. At that moment, the color of her bra is about as important as his dentition.

Unconscious/conscious -- both essential to produce strong writing. The ideas emerge from the unconscious. The polish is applied with the skills of a craftsperson who takes a rough but shiny rock and a quarter ounce of platinum and turns it into an engagement ring.