Monday, May 11, 2009

No Time for Writer's Block

Wishing for more time to write is a trap into which we writers often fall. What's more important is to make the best of the time you have. I can fit small poems quite easily into the chinks and pauses and cracks of my life. Even novelists such as the wildly successful Jodi Picoult have managed to write little bits at a time. (No, I haven't read any of her books, but I do respect her dedication.)

In a recent interview in Time, Picoult said, "When I started writing, I had a newborn baby and then I very quickly had his brother and sister. I didn't have time for writer's block. I wrote every few minutes that the kids were napping or at nursery school or watching Barney on television. Because of that, I learned how to really sit down quickly and focus when I needed to. I've always sort of believed that writer's block is a luxury for people who have time on their hands. If you don't, you don't get it."

If you're using lack of time as an excuse not to write or do whatever it is you love to do, that's what it is - an excuse. Begin where you are, and do what you can in the present moment.

4 comments:

  1. >I can fit small poems quite easily into the chinks and pauses and cracks of my life.

    I really like the way you put that!

    Lately, I've been enjoying playing WoW. Poetry has no appeal to me at the moment. So I'm not writing because I'm enjoying something else more, for now.

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  2. There was recently an article in Poets & Writers about how the Internet is changing narrative and storytelling, proposing that WoW and other such games are reclaiming the most ancient kind of collaborative storytelling.

    I can't find the article on their website at the moment, but it was a great exploration of possibilities in the continual evolution of creative media.

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  3. I'd be interested to read that article. Yes, it's like a story in which one is virtually living, made all the more enjoyable by interacting with friends instead of just programmed characters. And because one may play multiple characters, each with a different set of abilities, one can enjoy the story from different perspectives. Let me know if you'd ever like to play: we're almost always one short in our dungeon group!

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  4. Such an ass-kickingly truthful statement, Kat. I'm grabbing my journal now!

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