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Writer’s Block: One Reason Why, The Three Things that Fuel It

I have an output ratio of 100:1. That means for every word, idea or story I manage to force into words and out of my pen, there are 100 backed up in my body, getting restless and bored and clamouring to get out. It’s exhausting and at some point it will be dangerous. Why risk exploding like a vowel-laden balloon when i could just sit down and open the tap?

Because I can’t just open the tap. The one reason? Fear.

What am I afraid of? As a child, nothing. As a body in the throes of puberty, everything. As an adult, too many things to count, so I sorted them and it turns out, fuel for my fear fals into one of three categories: fear of being eaten, fear of being ostracized, and fear of being wrong.

Fear of Being Eaten

I blame the food chain and survival instinct for Fear #1. Fear of being eaten is what kept our ancestors alive to see another day in the cave. Even today, as human settlements spread into what was once wilderness, there is a chance of encountering predators that value humans not for their superior intellect, but for the quality of their meat. In my world, I may at some point encounter a hungry bear or wolf, but I am more likely to be consumed by beliefs, values and attitudes – mine and others. We are told over and over to ‘be ourselves’, yet praised when ignoring ourselves for the good of others, be they individuals, institutions or corporations. We know it as guilt, conscience, instinct, or signal, but that gnawing weighted feeling in the gut when a decision goes against something we’ve been taught to believe can literally eat us from the inside out. Depending on what we’ve been taught, what we choose to believe, or whether we feel we have a choice at all, every decision and action may come with this gnawing feeling. maybe you’ve heard the voices: I’m working late, I should be home with the kids; I’m playing Barbies with the kids, but i should be reviewing that report; I’m buying takeout for supper, I should be cooking; I’m working my 9-5 but I should be writing; I’m writing but I should be doing something that actually contributes to society … That is what increasingly consumes me each time I sit down to write: first on my novel, then my blog, then anything that had to do wth promotion or creation of my own work. For clients? Not a problem. To open the tap for my work, I have to treat myself like my best client. That means getting curious about the gnawing sensation, standing my ground, learning from it, and releasing the energy for writing rather than consuming it to beat myself up. Eat or be eaten. Yes! And I’m done being my own dinner.

Fear of Being Ostracized

This again came from our hardy ancestors, I believe. There is safetyy in numbers when fending off hungry prowlers or enemy tribes. Being cast out of the cave or village to fend for yourself meant certain death, most likely from Fear #1. In modern times, being ostracized is not as dramatic but just as devastating. losing a job is terrifying not only because of the financial stress, but the social judgement: only losers lose a job. What will my partner/children/parents/neighbours/guy in the grocery store who knew my manager’s wife’s uncle think?
How many times do we nearly bite our tongues in half for fear of losing a relationship that in reality brings us way more grief than joy, anyway? Or go along with the committee even though we believe they’re on the wrong track? Peer pressure is often described as a childhood angst but for most adults I know, it remains a thickened concrete influence in their lives, and rarely for the better. Being alone is ‘bad’; being ‘with someone’ is good, even if that someone threatens to smother your signal or keep you small. Whether or not I was taught that, it is something I came to hold as true. Opening up enough to learn something new will open the tap to my words as well. We are each individuals, and we are never alone unless we tell ourselves otherwise or listen to people who spin those stories for their own benefit.

Fear of Being Wrong

This is the biggest brute of all in my bully pen. As a very young child, I had no limits or blocks. I laughed, embraced, sang, talked, danced, and entertained anyone and anything that would stand still and listen. I shared completely and instinctively. That was who I was. But for parents raised with strict codes of privacy and silence, my behaviour was overwhelming and appalling. A young child approaching strangers at random requires immediate supervision, patience, and a comfort level of self that the parents can smile and own their child’s behaviour on her behalf rather than be humiliated and afraid of being judged for raising a wild child, which is how I think my parents felt. They only wanted to keep me safe, but the price of that safety was my spontaneity, and the lessons were both swift and effective. Keep quiet, and there is reward. Act out and there is punishment. I wasn’t physically harmed, but the sting of a glare or shouted lecture on how i have to start behaving myself has lasted 40 years or more. The occasional spanking I received has been long forgotten. Then I started school, and call out the wrong answer, get in the wrong line, step on the wrong playground and retribution again is swift: shame and humiliation. Some of us learn to laugh it off. I thought I did, until years later I began excavating the landfill blocking my inner signal and discovered mountains of memories oozing their zaps of ridicule, name-calling and calling-out. As an adult, I was called to work in the printed word but also realized how seriously each word committed to paper was taken. Words in a contract could cost you plenty. The wrong words in a news article could cost you a lawsuit or your reputation. Not writing it down seemed the safest place to be. Safety created by others. An illusion. Safety created by me: no word is stronger than that.

Finding these three triggers has helped me built a world of safety, of my own creation. Threatened by one of these I can treat it as I would any bully; look it in the eye, learn what I can, then release and move to a space where my signal is safe and waiting for me. This wil be a constant process of repetition to rewire decades, generations even, of learned and shared behaviours. So what. I don’t know how long it will take, either. Not much of a business plan, but a definitive plan for how I want to live my life.

The tap is now open to a trickle. Here’s to keeping it that way, and seeing what else is to come.

Thanks for being here.

– Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is a publisher, consultant, and author of the Finding Maria series.
www.FindingMaria.com

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Tuscan Thursday: where my renaissance begins

You know those annyoing little barricade graphics that pop up when a website is Under Construction? There’s one on my company, my career, my life, orange cones everywhere. Icoudn’t be more lost. And I couldn’t be happier. There was a time when like a frantic driver late for work I cursed every cone as a delay, an obstacle, and sure-fire sign that the world hates me and you know what, I hate it right back. Now, I’m stopping, breathing, admiring its colour vivid through rain, snow and streaks of grime, marvelling at its posture amid wind, traffic, backhoes and threats.  My life has been shattered, shifted and unearthed; I can rush to restore it, patting down the soil and filling in the cracks so all was as it once was, but I choose to embrace the chaos. I say “Yes!” to the mess, the uncertainty, the delays and diversions, for ultimately, they are the jounrey itself. The path I was on was the diversion, from the dismissed childhood, forgotten ancestors, overwhelming insights and intense feelings that to an awakening body feel like needles rather than tingles. Part of what was forgotten was my call to Renaissance and this week, it came flooding back in brilliant clarity, because a dam of fury melted, one I carried with piercing agony for years. I had no idea, but my body did.

At the time I steeped in the Hawaiian sun as a Rennaisance Woman in April 2016, I was supposed to be in Tuscany, the cradle of the historical Renaissance. I had been accepted into a two-week writing fellowship, and when I confirmed in October 2015 there was no doubt . But by November, my father’s health was declinining and for fear of being needed at home in the spring I deferred my placement. He passed in December, and the call to Hawaii came that winter. I did not give up Tuscany; I embraced the Renaissance in an invitation and place free of deadlines, schedules, routines and deliverables. It was a step to acknowledging that my writing was a part but not the whole, a conduit rather than shelter … steps that I continue to take slowly and painfully. Talents are so easily used as shields rather than invitations and explorations. Cracking the armour is done not only by a well-chosen word, but a well-placed one, visible to those who can support, challenge, fire up and cool down the energy needed to push through process and create. When that energy is blocked, the agony is intense, deep, and invisible, shutting down and isolating cells, tissue, entire chunks of your body from awareness and engagement.

And that’s what Tuscany had come from me. For to this land of beauty nd promise I attached values and judgements so ingrained I could do nothing for years but rage at the pain or shut it down.

Years before Renaissance Women or my fellowship, I dreamed of Tuscany. I have never been, nor had I considered going, but I awoke feeling both afire and grounded, as if the path to my more-connected self had been revealed. The visuals in my dream were vivid: greens richer than I had ever seen, scents of salt water and sun-baked earth, tastes of food fresh from the vine, but tthey paed to the sensations with which I was left: I could taste the music, touch the colour, see the passion, hear the growth. And above it all was the knoweldge within my body that I would not do this alone, that part of what made this experuence so fantastic is that I had soeone as awakened and engaged as I to share it, cell for cell, word for word, moment for moment.

My search then became fixated on the person. Who was he? Would he realize it? When would we go? When I was sure I had found him, I of course said nothing, not yet. I would let him reveal it to me. One day, he did, speaking of his desire to visit Tuscany, sampling Italian wine, trying out their style of cooking. Except he wasn’t doing it with me. He saw my dream, took it, and was trying to turn it into something it wasn’t. That was my story as my body filled with rage and I spewed flames of dismissal and criticism. How dare he. He reacted as I knew he would, defensively, diverting the conversation and seemingly dismissing my claim. That night, I packed away my books on Tuscany and vowed never to speak of it again until he came to his senses. My dream sat, a seething oozing mess of unowned beliefs and irritation, deep in my gut and over time I forgot about it. We maintainined our connection, he and I, but distant, as if engaged in swordplay, parrying and dodging, holding our ground but too shaky to advance.

Then came lunch last week. My body knew before I that there was a shift about to happen. Churning in my gut began late morning; by the time I sat in our booth, I could barely look at the menu for the nausea. I knew not of what was to come, but had learned enough to detach story from sensation. I sat with the queasiness, breathed, and allowed things to unfold. We chatted easily of work and his annual trip south. Then, like tossing a match to gasoline, he offered casually that he had two more trips on the books for this year: one west, and Tuscany.

I left my body in a whoosh of rage and agony. He was doing it again. My mood sank into the blackness, and my words and breath along with it. My dream was finally gone, torn from me and tossed aside, with me powerless to stop it.

Powerless. No, that’s not right. Get back here, in your body, right now.

I asked him about his trips. He started in about a recent work trip. I gently corrected him. Tuscany was something he wanted to do. It turns out the plans weren’t finalized, or even started. When you find out more about it, let me know, I hear myself ask him. He reacted with surprise but agreement. He turns to grab his notebook and with his attention diverted the words come easily: Tuscany was always something I believed you and I would do together.

And there it was. My truth. Out there, for him to dismiss, ridicule, deny … or perhaps accept. The turning point for me was that I didn’t care. I knew what I knew, and believed what I believed. In that moment, sharing it with no expectation, I confirmed my place in my own dream. His reaction would be his, and his dream. It could be different, it could be the same, but it was still his and mine. Another choice point woud be to make it ours but if that choice never came, I would still have mine.

Is that so? His reaction: equally calm and well-timed. I heard not surprise, but an invitation: tell me more.

I admitted I didn’t know why, just that I embraced Tuscany as a place of being rather than a place ‘to do’. I shared my awakening of the senses from my dream, and he agreed. It wasn’t about old buildings and dead people and art and crowds and traffic and sightseeing. It was the next level of being.

What we both didn’t say was that it was a place of being with each other. But again, I didn’t care. This was about me. His decision is about him.

If I am invited to go to Tuscany this fall, I will consider the opportunity.

If I am not and want to go, I will make it happen for myself. No longer is my dream, my happiness or my worth tied to him or anyone else.
There was my Renaissance moment. And in that moment I have never loved myself or him more. What was once a source of bitter disappointment was gratitude, for a presence in my life that allowed me to face, melt and process this festering pile of outmoded beliefs: I didn’t deserve Tuscany, I shouldn’t have feelings for someone else, I’m not able to do this alone. With this weight gone, I had room to breathe, to feel, and to turn around and see things from his perspective. Who wants to be in the presence of another when tasked with their happiness as well as yours? Who wants to feel as if they’ve crushed the world of another when only fulfilling what feels right in their own world? I was doing that, perhaps as the greatest diversion of all, for as my process continues I realize my self-sabotage runs far deeper than my intellect is aware. What I deeply want quickly becomes my nemesis, with civil war raging to both attain and destroy it.

I will see Tuscany some day but for now, the feeling I carry is far more enlightening than any view or setting could provide. I sit with my lawn under a foot of snow, sky grey, air damp …. but inside by being  flows a sun-kissed emerald green that days after this encounter still warms and encourages.

This is the life I choose, and to which I say ‘Yes!’ Under Construction or In Progress may be applicable labels, and they are only labels, for months or years to come. So be it. What and who I am is in there, no expiry date. Yes.