So after you’ve identified your writer’s block and given yourself permission to write the worst stuff you can dream up, do some dredging. Hard to feel good about that? Well, you should. You are doing the hard work of slogging through the muck, to get what’s wedged unwedged, what’s backed up flushed. It’s unglamorous, but necessary. You’re cutting a channel through what’s got you stuck.
Your efforts scribbling might feel feeble, like the efforts of those spindly cranes we all saw clawing at the sandy banks of the Suez Canal to free the 200,000 ton Ever Given cargo ship where it wedged lengthwise in the waterway for over a week (back during the first year of the pandemic). But that digging wasn’t as futile as it seemed. Take it from the folks on the Ever Given—every little push and pull helped.
Persist. Do whatever it takes, from digging, pulling, dredging, tugging, reorienting, again and again. And take help from wherever you can get it, and whatever: including the high tide and the full moon, which is what helped the Ever Given get unstuck. Yes, whether you’re a poet or a 200,000 ton cargo ship, the moon, that great influencer, can help free you from what binds you.
And a little necessity doesn’t hurt either. Fortunately you’re not dealing with the pressures of the entire international community expecting their Amazon deliveries on time (and then some). But heck yeah, it’s important to get the flow of your writing back on track so you can keep that supply of good ideas and glorious sentences moving forward, to produce your best work.
Get that inlet between idea and execution free again. You’re cutting and widening the channel between your ideas and the page while holding to the lowered standards you’ve set to keep the flow moving. As William Stafford says:
To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can’t keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression: it’s cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between[…] If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I’m off.
Ah, yes, indeed. It’s as simple and as hard as that: One thing helps the next thing come—and you’re off. “These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected,” Stafford adds. “And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen.”
That’s the goal. Dredge out what’s in the way and get traction where it’s needed—not mooring where it’s not. Whether it takes a few minutes, hours, or days, soon, what follows is the payoff you’ve been hoping for: something new.
Right before you, now, is movement. What’s moving the fastest? What’s nimble in the channel before you? Name it. It may be a word or phrase that rings true. An idea that lights up as the words flow. A plot twist, character tension, an unmixed metaphor, the right rhyme the sonnet’s argument turns on.
And here’s some more good news: if it draws you back into your piece, if it helps it make sense, it’s a word or phrase or sentence or idea that’s a part of a whole. It captures something essential about what you’ve been after after all—not just a way back in, but a hint of coherence, a nod towards completion.
Whatever it is that allows you to say “and I’m off,” put it in the place that needs it most. That might be page one, or a link between chapters, or the end of the line.
Then move on to the word, next sentence, and the next. Don’t look back on what blocked you right now—let it float away, towed by tugboats to the Bitter Lakes to meet its fate. Your forward focus is what matters, so you can make sure the channel will be free for the next idea in the supply chain of your writing’s inspiration—and the next, and the next.
