Ars Blogging and Poetica

As any follower of my blog has recognized, I'm again going through spurts of flood and drought, today obviously being the flood. Writing is something magical to me, and creative writing is the zenith of this experience. It's such a euphoric experience, leaving the writer with a feeling of transcendence. Lately though, writer's block has been getting the better of me. It's such a terrible feeling to view your work as trash, reading each succeeding line with more disgust. It's an even worse feeling to open up some of your previous work and also metaphorically vomit. The best remedy I've discovered is to take a break, step away and let the ideas resurface after an extended period of time.

In the interim, I've been brooding on what to write next, what to insert into this blog, and doing a lot of work on the deck, in the yard and catching back up on my reading. I have a lot on my plate when it comes to writing, and a lot of self-imposed goals and achievements to live up to/attain, and it's frustrating to know that writer's block, procrastination and other endeavors interfere with these successes.

It's every writer's dream to write something indelible and "great," something praise-worthy and even, dare I write it, award-winning. And conversely, every writer's nightmare to be trapped in writer's block, to write into and within oblivion, or to write something not self-satisfying and critically satisfying or acclaimed. It's always gratifying to hear or read that your work was impacting, praised or cherished by someone, or at the very least appreciated, but the first step to this feeling is to satisfy yourself with actually writing, something I've had a lot of difficulty with these past few weeks. Perhaps it's the post-residency hangover; maybe I'm so inundated with ideas and new knowledge that I don't know how to proceed in an organized and efficient manner. Maybe there's too much going on to focus on my writing, or maybe, like in my previous post, I'm too preoccupied with reality to sit down and write poetry, something that won't earn money or change the world. It's something that arguably is distracting from the real world, unless I write about the real world, of course. But my life is only so interesting in comparison to what's occurring outside my window and far away, viewed from my television.

To write or not to write, that is not the question, but the struggle.