Drought
n.
When attributed to writing, a drought is the prolonged lack of creative inspiration that makes squeezing out two words difficult. Also known as creative blockage, or writers block, this can be attributed to many factors. Stress, change in lifestyle, issues with work, or plain being off your feed. In my case, it was a very stressful creative enterprise in March that has put me off my creative vibe as it were and left me in the weeds.
I was working on putting together a game for a convention in March, a huge game for thirty-five people in which I had to write character backstories for all thirty-five characters. It was stressful, and unpleasant, and I didn’t get a chance to enjoy any of it. What I ended up doing instead was driving myself plum insane trying to get it done and when it was over? I felt like an overused matchstick. I said to myself, “I’ll just take a break for a little bit, and then get back into the saddle.”
That was over a month ago and I haven’t written a damn thing.
On the heels of this creative burnout came stress like I’ve never hit before and concerns about my living situation among a number of other insanities. All of this amounted to me not feeling like I had enough time to do anything, forget about anything creative. So I haven’t written anything in over a month.
This last week, I’ve been sick with flu-like nonsense. Today is the last of it, I think, with the ‘aching-stuffyhead-mildfever-Ineedtorest’ part giving way to the ‘IneedtoleavethehouseOMG’ part right now. Since I’ll be home today, and resting, I want to try to pry something out of myself. And why? Because I believe that writer’s block is an invention of the writer’s subconscious, not any sort of departure of the ‘writing spirit’ or anything so mystical. We put it there. We create it. We get it in our heads that we can’t do anything and so we don’t.
So today, I’m saying ‘Yes, I can.’
So I’m riffing off Obama. So what? Off I go. Geronimo.