On Writer’s Block and Soul-Vomit
One writer’s commitment to sit vigil for the muse
If I know someone will read what I’m writing, it goes to shit. Well, maybe it’s not knowing the reading will happen. It’s when I know someone expects to read my writing, that the words start coming out all wrong. Like someone is watching.
What I normally do is something I call soul-vomit. I open my mind and spew words onto screen or paper as if channeling something from the void. My void.
But give me a deadline and an audience and I seize up. The words start to come from my brain. One by one. I push them out like pellets and it’s uncomfortable and unnatural and hard.
I don’t feel like the work reads that way, necessarily. It probably reads with a little less sparkle. The shimmer around the edges of each sentence is dull. But the ideas are compelling and the paragraphs pull. It’s readable.
Once, in middle school, I painted a pair of jeans with weird designs in a dozen colors. I painted song lyrics and peace signs and hearts. I drew a circle in yellow paint at the seat of my paints and wrote, “county seat” in sloppy block letters. I thought the jeans were funny. Bold. I wore them to school because I could and one of the popular girls stopped me in the hall and told me she loved them. She wanted a pair. And she’d pay me for them.
Wut?
Huh?
Does not compute.
She wants graffiti pants? Okay… I mean I can try. I can still remember the work — she brought me a pair of shiny grey denim and told me she liked red and white and black and pink. With a color pallet and an idea, I painted. Well first, I procrastinated. Waiting for inspiration. Until she grabbed me after class one day and asked about her missing pants. So I got to work. I used pink glittery puff paint to carefully transcribe a cool song. I marked the pants up with hearts and stars and slashes of white and grey. What would a cool girl like? Applying strategy resulted in ordered drawings. More linear. Organized. Commercial. Honestly, kinda boring. She hated them and so did I.
I never wore my own graffiti pants again.
All of my life, it feels like I’ve walked a tightrope of desperately wanting to be seen and running scared at the thought of someone watching. What is that? Self-confidence (read: lack thereof)? No, it’s not that.
I think it’s expectation. The uncarryable weight of responsibility for another’s experience. It’s too much. I can never trust my muse to show up when I need her. The roiling in my gut that leads to soul-vomit is flighty at best. It just happens when it happens.
Some call it writer’s block.
Others call it an excuse.
I’ve been practicing magic lately. Not tricks. Real magic. Manifesting. Visualizing. Creating a reality within myself and then watching it unfold in the world around me. Physical manifestations of internal whims. It’s crazy to watch things I will come to life. I’m 7 for 13 at this point. Call me crazy, but I’m winning.
So with this in mind, I think I’m going to practice this soul-writing some more. I don’t know that each time I sit down, the good stuff will come up. But I think making my self available will make it easier to happen. Right?
We’ll see what happens. If I start coming around more here, you’ll know it’s working. And if I don’t, know I’m waiting. Sitting vigil at the keyboard until the muse circles back around.
