I /want/ do do something. I want to describe. I want to write something or take pictures or squish the mud outside into an interesting pattern. But I /can't/. I try...I'll sit down. Try to type something. Nothing. What I have in my head doesn't show up on paper, or on screen...it's immensely frustrating. What do /you/ (in the plural sense) do? -Brianna

-- Brianna Flynn (jtflynn@accessunited.com), February 07, 2000

Answers

Sometimes I get so caught in the need to *make* something that it takes over my better sense, I think.

I often get a block about what I _want_ to create but find that somehow, someway, *something* comes out - if I want to write I often get a picture idea. If I want to make a painting I get an idea for a journal entry - it's sort of bizarre, really. Hmmm.

Somedays all I create is an edible meal - and on somedays, that's good enough. Heh.

Catherine

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), February 07, 2000.

Julia ...

Heh - that's interesting. I was thinking today that half of my problems would pretty well always be solved - at any given moment - if I just took some of my own advice.

Interesting thoughts.

Chris - Bukowski - I laughed my coffee onto my keyboard, I swear. I almost quoted that myself today. LOL.

Catherine

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), February 08, 2000.

To quote one of my favorite authors, Charles Bukowski: "Don't Try"*

Crazy as it sounds, I've learned not to _try_ to do anything when I want to do something because I know from experience that when I do that, the results are lacking: The poem is insipid, the voice bland, the picture/graphic looks tired. So I don't.

If I must be active about this, I start writing in my notebook about whatever catches my fancy where I'm at. There's never an audience, there's never a goal, it's just writing. And what's really weird is that I typically (but not always) catch myself turning a phrase that serves to charge the rest of that entry. It cleans the pipes to just go off like that and be totally unconcerned with the results. And if I think of it later on, I'll screen out choice phrases later on.

Otherwise, I just let it go for a while. I'd rather not force the issue. Otherwise I find myself cringing later on at some poor expression or other (the free verse equivalent of "Moon-June- Spoon"). For me, I'd rather not write a poem for a month or a journal entry for a week than confront a temporary limitation.

*-FWIW, this was his epitaph. Being Buk he had a much more jaded use for the phrase. I just polish off the edges and use it myself. Hey, it beats Yoda...

-- Chris Blakeley (vox@madstop.org), February 08, 2000.

Sometimes you just have to WAIT. And the waiting can often feel like the most corrosive, thwarting, infuriating paralysis - sometimes you percolate like this until its intolerable and something snaps and you _do_ create. The other way - maybe through a back door. Don't try to mirror what's in your head. Let your hand, foot, cheek, whatever control the mind. And don't have an expectation about the results, or its "quality". Use it as a clue. And you know what? I should take my own advice. :)

-- julia hrysenko (lekia99@aol.com), February 08, 2000.