When and how to write...

From direct and indirect experience, I can honestly say that all writers will at some time in their creative lives be unable to write anything more than their own name on a piece of paper. This is not what I'd call "writer's block", so much as "human's block". All creative people, at some point, will face the dreaded invisible brick wall of "uncreativity", unable to break through no matter how hard they try. Buy why is this, and how can they overcome the impasse?

I think blockage happens for individual reasons because humans are very individual beings. Each creator will have their own reason for not creating, and this is primarily because they are not machines. They might have families, jobs, illnesses, money worries, fears and phobias etc. They have a psychology that is, at one and the same time, desirous of success and vulnerable to thoughts of failure. A machine, on the other hand, can churn out the same thing over and over...ad infinitum...but its output will never be as unique as the output from a human being.

That said, having "human's block" for too long can become a bigger problem, especially if it lasts more than a year. A very recent article in the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-rituals-creative-minds-mason-currey?CMP=fb_gu
talks about the routines and behaviours of famous creative writers, musicians and thinkers...and it is very interesting; not for what it says about block, but rather how to tap into the rich vein of creativity, be that rising early in the morning, drinking vat loads of coffee, martinis for lunch etc.

What most resonated with me was not so much the fascinating and sometimes bizarre routines of some creators, but the mundane and the apparently trivial. It doesn't surprise me, for instance, that a large number of thinkers need time and space to think, and what better way than to walk...preferably in natural surroundings...

I've always liked to walk. As a writer, I am always writing in my head as I walk, especially if I have characters walking in my head with me. It is not only because the natural surroundings provide space to think, it is the motion of walking that sparks the creativity. It is as if the physical movement of walking (done without thinking) prompts the thinking part of the brain to drift and move. I have also found that moving in any capacity, but particularly on the upper deck of a bus, allows for the same kind of mental drifting. Ideas rise up, characters speak, narrative possibilities materialise, when before, sitting at my desk, they were silent.

However, at some point, the writer will have to get down to the nitty-gritty of writing at home, somehow using the drift wood collected on a long walk/bus journey to build something more substantial, like a poem, short story or a novel.

If it is to be a novel, you had better invest in a sturdy pair of walking boots.

AFM