I’ve been writing more poetry, but it’s been slower than I like. I haven’t actually had “writer’s block” in forever and, like some writers, I’m not even sure if I believe that it exists. I think it’s common for writers to want to write but not be able to think of anything, and this is what’s often called writer’s block. But, unlike the typical perspective of writer’s block where it’s almost like a creative ailment that just is and we, as writers, have to wait for it to pass, I view it as a symptom of a greater issue. It’s an internal struggle. And while external factors can contribute, I view it as an indicator of something being out of balance internally.

There are a lot of things that contribute to whether or not we write everyday/most days. The amount of free time we have, the amount of energy we have, the amount of inspiration and motivation we have, etc. But none of these are what people refer to as writer’s block. Being too tired to write is not writer’s block. Being too busy to write is not writer’s block. So what is writer’s block, then?

This is just my opinion, but every time I have struggled with it and/or seen others struggle with it, there has been one primary denominator: a lack of consistency. This could be a lack of writing consistency, a lack of reading consistency, or even just a lack of focus, but in some way, the person struggles to work out their creative muscles and it gets reflected in whether or not they experience “writer’s block.”

I’ll use myself as an example. If I’m not reading poetry every week, then I’m not writing consistently. This is something I’ve found to be true for myself over and over again. I can read any other genre off and on and it won’t impact my writing, but poetry has to be an all-the-time thing. And by that I mean I have to read at least one book of poetry every week. For some reason, it fills my creative cup (I hate this metaphor, but it’s accurate) and gives me creative energy to sit down and write something. If I’m not reading poetry, I’m not writing.

In this context, “writer’s block” is really just me ignoring the system I know needs to be in place in order to write consistently. And it’s not a simple fix; I can’t just grab a book of poems, read ten of them, and suddenly I’m back to writing every day. If I get out of the practice of reading poetry for longer than a few days, it can take weeks to get myself back to the point of pushing through any other mental blockages keeping me from getting words on the page. If I’m out of the practice for more than a month, it can take months to get myself back to center. Especially if I’ve tried to keep up my creative output without any creative input to balance things.

I want to acknowledge that sometimes we do encounter legitimate mental blockages that make writing extremely difficult. I encountered this over the weekend. Every Sunday/most Sundays, I meet over Zoom with a group of other women writers. We take an hour to write, and then we take an hour for each of us to read what we wrote and receive positive feedback. Some weeks, I am able to jump right into a new poem that just flows effortlessly. Some weeks, I don’t know what to write and it takes ten or fifteen minutes to get into it.

This last Sunday was one such day. I couldn’t figure out an entry point into a new poem, and I couldn’t even figure out what I wanted to write. Our prompt was about a woman runner who broke a bunch of long-distance running records recently, and I thought I wanted to write a poem about my goal to be a prolific poet. But the more I tried to force this poem out of me, the more it retreated inward. I became increasingly frustrated and almost gave up writing anything at all until all at once, the first line came to me: “My father is dying.” Just like that, the words spilled onto the page and I was able to write about a very real, very stark reality in my life.

Before the first line came to me, I might have said that I was suffering from “writer’s block,” but really, I was suffering from “writer-isn’t-listening-to-her-inner-self.” Mental and creative blockages are real, but they’re usually self-inflicted. Sometimes the thing we sit to write about isn’t what we need to write about; learning to identify the difference is a skill that comes with a lot of time and practice, and it can eliminate a lot of what we think “writer’s block” is. This is why freewriting is such a powerful writing exercise; sometimes we need to write out the fluff/stretch our writing muscles before we can access the heart of what we need to say.

This also connects with how often we’re reading. The more we read, the more we hone our ability to hear our own inner creative voices. Moreover, the more widely and diversely we read, the more we hone our ability to access the things we must to write the things we need to write. I’m reading a book by Edward Hirsch right now and, while his poetry isn’t at all like mine, it’s showing me new ways of accessing specific topics. And even though my writing has been slower lately, it hasn’t stalled altogether, and that is a good sign. Moreover, it’s slowly picking up speed, which is also a good sign.

One thing I’m struggling with right now is the impulse to write poems that could all be connected in a collection. I need to let go of that and just fucking write. I need to be willing to write bad poems, too, and right now I haven’t been, and it’s stifling me. I don’t have “writer’s block,” I have too-stuck-up-in-my-own-head block. And it won’t go away until I stop holding myself back.

Stop holding yourself back, too.
Let yourself be reckless in your creativity.

Love and light.