Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Making Space for Writing

I get stuck sometimes.

Stuck in commitments. Stuck in work. Stuck in feeling tired. Stuck in laundry, sleep, grocery shopping and meal preparation. Stuck in needing to move my body. Stuck in a book, at a play, watching dance. Stuck because everything takes time and time is what I need for writing.

Energetically stuck is a different thing. I sit at the laptop or at the temporarily shared computer (I still haven't replaced my dead desktop; so I use my partners - which I try to do sparingly) and nothing comes to mind. Or the project I want to be working on is stalled is what I mean. I can type up my writing experience and how the IPRC program will benefit me; I can type the email to my childhood friend, talking about our weekend and a day trip to the coast; I can write about the plans for the upcoming conference where I'll be interpreting; or emails to students and department chair and videorelay manager.

But movement is very slow and progress difficult to find on the memoir right now. I flail looking for the direction I want to go, or to see which version on my computer is the most recent one (is that 500 words difference because I added or subtracted? is the more current date because I uploaded a version rather than it being the most current which was already there?).

Today I was talking with someone who suggested that I might be harboring some anger. And that anger might be blocking my energy to write, because, as she and I have discussed before, anger really sucks up a lot of energy and blocks my flow. She also suggested that writing a letter to that person I'm angry at (whether I send it or not) might free up some energy.

Writing in order to free up energy to write.

She may be right.

I wrote the letter.

And almost immediately after, I found the place I want to focus for this week's writing assignment in the Lit Star Training course, which is a part of the memoir.

Maybe writing got me unstuck to write.

Yes, I think it did.
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