Submarine Weather...

It has been way too long since I posted a blog entry.

That’s the problem with keeping a blog. You need to keep it regularly – and sometimes it is awfully hard to keep regular. Bran helps, so does prune juice. Baked beans and dark beer are pretty good too.

But none of that helps your writing.

I am sure that all of you writers out there have fallen prey to that terrible phenomenon that some folks call writers block. I want to say something about it – but not just yet.

For now, let’s just talk about the weather.

It has been raining for nearly forever – here in Halifax.

Since Easter we have had about 90% rate of precipitation. One day of sunshine followed by nine days of gray cold drizzling rain. All of this vertical wet-itude will really depress the hell out of a person’s disposition. Your skin begins to gray out. Your toes begin to mildew. You smell funny. Your mouth forgets how to work those smile muscles. Life begins to slowly sag.

Will it never end – you ask?

Will the sky never clear up?

Will the clouds never forget to pay their water bill?

Did the weathergirl lie to me?

Writing is like that sometimes as well. You begin to feel that you just can’t squeeze out anymore. Your fingers have forgotten how to type. Your brain is all futzy, fugued-out, and funked up.

I can’t write – is what you tell yourself.

So you try a little harder. You take up yoga and tantric  rhomboid mantra chanting. You learn to hula and you wonder if maybe  you need to cash in the family savings bonds and send yourself on a trip  around the world. You beat your head against the keyboard until Q-W-E-R-T-Y is permanently tattooed above your left eyebrow.

Times like this you have to think like a submarine.

You’re not blocked. You’ve just gone under for a little while. Like the ten thousand times ten thousand times that tourists have looked out over Loch Ness compared to the half a dozen times that funky old sea monster has been seen – sometimes creativity must submerge a little.

Don’t let it block you. Don’t let it stop you. Come at the problem from a different angle.  If you’re stuck on one chapter then start working on that section three chapters down the road. Pick a different scene or a different character. Fool around with the thing. Turn it inside out and wring it dry.

It’s not a block. It’s just another bend in the road.

Oh look. The sky is graying a little brighter now. I can hear birds singing in my lilacs. If I squint I can even smell the lilacs.

That is the thing to remember, you understand.

Sooner or later rain will stop.

Sooner or later your writing will begin again.

Sooner or later I will have completed another blog entry.

Like right now.

Yours in storytelling,

 

Steve Vernon

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