It's been a while. I started out the year with good intentions of keeping up this blog, but alas, reality got a strangle-hold on me, and my writing became blocked. Anyone who has known me very long, knows that I don't believe in writer's block, per se. "Writer's Block," in my opinion, is not at condition in and of itself, but rather a symptom of other problems.
Writer's Block comes when a person is hiding something. He could be hiding something from others or from himself. The only way to alleviate the symptom is to deal with the root cause--to figure out what it is the writer is having difficulty being honest about. You see, no matter what the subject, there is always an autobiographical element. Be it ever-so-small, it is there nonetheless, revealing something about the writer himself. It may just be the slightest dash of attitude, mood, or a prevailing world view, but the only way a writer can avoid revealing something of himself in his writing is by being utterly mechanical and dull.
Since my last blog entry in February, I've not been shrinking back from writing entirely. I've written (and seen produced) a couple of short films, done a little revision on my novel, and started building the groundwork for another feature-length screenplay (a true story about someone else--not me). It's been the blogging that has been difficult, because that's where I am most blatantly me. As a professional, I cannot allow myself the luxury of wallowing in blockage, so, as with so many other maladies, I must exercise to break through.
Where do you exercise? For physical exercise, some people have no problem going to a public gym or health club, but for a woman who is flabby and self-conscious, that is a difficult step to take. She may not want to be seen in such a condition. There's a time and a place for everything. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name . . .
. . . but other times--especially when breakthrough has been eluding you--quite the opposite is true. You want to go where nobody knows your name . . . where you can disappear in anonymity. My hiding place for such exercise, which I would recommend highly to struggling writers (as well as those wanting to practice self-therapy), is a private blog. And that is where I have been prolific lately. Has it worked as far as ushering in breakthrough? I'd say that today is a success in that when I was inspired to write this message, the initial impulse was to stash it away in that place where nobody knows my name. But then I realized there is no need to do so. It may be a small, trivial message, but it is my babystep in working my way back to trusting.
Why have I been having trouble with trust? Like so many other things in life, it may be one of the very traits that drives me to create in the first place that also causes me to shy back. One of those mixed bags, blessings bound to a curse, ying and yang, Cheech and Chong, Donny and Marie . . .
Okay, bad example, but I think you know what I mean. (And yes, that was probably an avoidance technique to stall for time . . . and since Donny and Marie numbers never end, what a l o n g stall indeed!)
Imagination. Imagination is of utmost importance to the writer, true, but it must be kept in check. The very creative imagination that provides a wealth of material for us to work with can also work against us on a personal level. My imagination can run so wild that it practically destroys me--especially since it has a tendency to run to the dark side. Creative types have to be careful to sort out the fiction from the reality in their own lives. That's largely what I've been doing lately, sorting through the memoir material to figure out where I have been lying to myself about myself. My theory being that the less I lie to myself, the more my creativity will flow freely without blockage.
You've heard people speak of needing a "reality check," well I would propose that we also need an occasional "imagination check." I think I had one today. I try to walk two miles a day (although I've been falling short on that quite a bit lately). Sometimes I do it on the track at the park, sometimes on the treadmill, and lately I've been trying to do it in my neighborhood more often than not.
On my route through the neighborhood, right around the 1.5 mile point, I pass a huge grassy yard that backs up to the sidewalk along a busy street, separated only by a chain-link fence. This is a rarity in southern California where most people like their privacy and six-foot high wood or block fences encase most back yards. I always look forward to passing this yard, not because I get to peek in and be a snoop, but because of the way it triggers my imagination.
Before I even reach the place on the sidewalk where I can peer into this private world, my senses are filled with the wondrous scent of gardenias and lavender, and glorious music, pouring out across the grass on loud speakers. It's not the typical rock or rap music that people are most likely to see fit to inflict on helpless audiences, but rather a mixture of grand classical, swing, and big band type fare. Coupled with the white linens often fluttering on the clothes lines, I'm always taken to places like the grand lawns F. Scott Fitzgerald peopled with handsome men and beautiful women in flamboyant garb. I almost expect vintage cars to pull up, tooting their horns, and gloved hands to wave gracefully--one might even say "gaily."
The thing that makes it even stranger is the fact that I've never seen anyone in that yard, ever . . . until today. I have imagined who might live there. I've even thought of going around the block to the front of the house and knocking on the door so I can meet this specter of my imagination. Often I've said it was populated by the ghosts of The Great Gatsby. And when I wasn't letting my literary imagination run to the supernatural and fictitious realm . . . I'd tell myself an elderly actress--retired and now wheel-chair bound--was gazing out a window, tracing with her fading eyes every contour of her lawn, recollecting the parties she threw back in the day when she was a star and the belle of every ball. I imagined that the only gentlemen who ever set foot in that yard were the suitors in white tuxedos who only existed in her memory now.
All that was until today.
Him.
There in the yard, in the middle of the yard, a man was lounging belly down on a lounge chair flattened out like a stretcher. He was not wearing a white tuxedo, nor gloves, nor smart hat . . . It didn't look like he had cut, or even combed, his hair in the past few months. His clothes were dingy. His head planted so concretely face-down on the chair that it was likely a pool of drool might be irrigating it. This was about as far from the image I had dreamed of as you could possibly get. What? Was the plumber taking a break in the midst of unclogging the kitchen sink? No, his limbs draped so comfortably, albeit not gracefully, toward the ground that he exuded a sense of belonging. This was his home.
Ruined! I thought. My image was totally ruined! But the music played on, washing over this motionless body that I wouldn't have thought out of place by a freeway off-ramp, holding out a tin can to passers-by. As the notes swelled and waned and circled every inch of the luscious lawn and beyond, it dawned on me that the image was not ruined, but rather it had been expanded. Had the occupant of this property been more elegant, there would have been no story worth repeating, but the very contrast of the expected and the revealed was beautiful: a reminder to look for the extraordinary in ordinary places, to look for the magnificent in the apparently mundane, and to believe--always believe--that the world is worth exploring because it is full of surprise, full of things we can't figure out with feeble logic and sluggish imagination.
