it’s spring so i’m writing again! this is the story i tell myself when i cringe at my winter dry season, which followed fall burnout, which was preceded by summer stopgivingafuck. whether the change in season is a placebo, or if my creative juices are actually photosynthesizing in strange and complex ways probably doesn’t matter, at least not for the writing itself. i already spend way too much time writing about writing.
the stories i tell myself about why i write or don’t write could fill a book, which is how i know i’m not ready to write one. i’m already too product-driven, too concerned over what people might think that i often can’t hear my own mind. this past year i’ve produced some of my favorite writing, thanks mostly to the fact that i stopped making a big deal about it. i’ve always interpreted the periods i don’t spew out a beautiful poem or vignette as a sign that my powers are fading, that i’m destined to look back at my talents like the “one that got away.” this year i learned that whatever’s trying to get away probably isn’t the one.
i also learned that there is no amount of workshops, classes, motivational memes, or prescribed regimens that can do more for a writer than what’s gained by cultivating a deeper understanding of self. in my most prolific days, i was showing up at poetry slams every week with new fire, a new notebook filled to the margins. i was generating stanzas with quadruple meanings encoded, multisyllabic rhymeschemes stacked like brick walls, 16, 24, 32 velvet-smooth bars lined in a row. i was writing as a way to learn who i was. this year i wrote to remind myself of who i’ve become.
one of the books i’ve been grazing on over the past few months is bruce lee’s tao of jeet kune do. as with all martial arts, it begins with underlining how much more important it is to defend than it is to strike. it was here that i discovered a different way of interpreting the writer’s block, as not an impediment but a defense. the best fighters recognize that most of the fight happens while in a block. to come out swinging inspires awe for only so long before they reveal themselves as empty blows.
we writers, too, can master our blocks. it’s while in a block that we can observe, feel, understand, intend. even when we’re not writing, when we’re not sure if the words will ever find us again, we’re still telling some kind of story in our head. i return to spring with a deeper appreciation for those stories, the ones that are often filled with the most epic battles with our own demons, the odysseys for self, the ones that have no language because they transcend. the stories that hit the hardest.