writer's block

I know where “writer’s block” comes from. It’s not a hidden creature in your mind that maneuvers between your synapses to prevent wonderfully creative thoughts from flowing through your gray matter. It’s not a voodoo curse.

It comes from trying too hard. From thinking about you’re writing too much. From someone telling you what to write about. Pressure, internal and external that can’t be vented by writing. The result is frustration and blank paper.

I was a journalism major for one semester in college. I took photographs for my high school yearbook for three and a half years. I wrote and took photos for my fraternity’s rush book, an annual miniature yearbook for deltyland. I’ve got the negative for almost every black and white photograph I took in high school and college. I all too well understand the necessity of being assigned photos to shoot. Somebody on the staff was doing a layout for one of the school clubs and needed photos, “Go take a picture of xyz”. “We need a group shot of the French Club”. I really didn’t mind being asked to get the photo of xyz. What I started minding, and it’s why I’m not a photojournalist today was the, “you shoulda done it like this”. “It woulda been better if ...” Call it my vanity. Call it my artistic bent. I didn’t like it!

I really enjoyed the candid shots. Classmates doing normal (or weird) things that reflected their personalities. Sporting events were fun. There was the spontaneity of the events on the court or field as well as those of the fans in the stands. Every once in a while someone at one of the set-up shoots would get a little bored posing and being told by someone how to stand, sit, wear their hair, and do something off the wall. Those were good shots. Unfortunately, these photos were seldom seen. They definitely didn’t get into the yearbook. It’s too bad. That one split second of reality often told more about a person than could be imagined.

Writing, I think, is the same way. Do it quick, Let it flow. Don’t think about it too much or it’ll come out sounding pretentious and stilted. A muse can’t come from an external wish to see something in writing. It has to be based on a flash between synapses that cries out to be written down. I’ll always write if for no better reason that to keep those flashes happening.

I’ll always be a photographer too. I’ve got a drawer full of cameras, lenses, flashes, and other stuff. I even have the equipment for setting up a dark room in my garage. My goal in life is to build a house and have a simple darkroom in it.