Writer's Block

I don’t really believe in it anymore. I mean, I definitely know that sometimes your creative energy flows better than other times. But I can’t remember falling victim to writer’s block in a very long time. At Temple, I took a class called Poetry as Performance that changed me as a writer forever. We had to write poems based on videos, pictures, looking in the mirror, anything you could think of we had to figure out a way to express it. It was then I really understood the phrase “inspiration is for amateurs.” And that doesn’t mean that “professionals” write uninspired pieces, I just came to realize that I should be inspired by everything. From looking into the eyes of a stranger and wondering what’s their story to the journey of a leaf that falls from a tree above me, I can write about pretty much anything. But what I have fell victim to is feeling unmotivated to even pick up my pen (or turn on the notes in my iPhone in this technical day and age). Sometimes I run from writing because I fear that if I put it down on paper, that my thoughts have now taken on a life all their own. And so it’s not that I can’t come up with anything, I just keep my ideas locked up. Sometimes I’d rather write someone else’s story than my own. Writing is a very vulnerable place, and as opposed to some outside power “blocking” my creativity, it is often times myself. Apprehensive about what the words come to mean when they come out of my head onto paper, onto a track. I fear that the thoughts I conjured up might actually be truth. Until someone else embodies the pain, joy or uncertainty that I am writing about, I feel like I am exposed, stark naked with the spotlight on me. But I could get use to being naked, it’s freeing. Lol. And so here I am … telling the stories of our lives, writer’s who?