2 in 30 - Writer's Block

I’ve been suffering from a severe case of writer’s block for years now. I attempt to mold words into phrases, phrases into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, but repeatedly, I fail. There’s an unfinished novel, poems started, but incomplete, and a blog that is visited more often by others, than it is by me. And that’s not saying much.

Once upon a time, I’d pen these epic poems, I had so much to say, the words trampled over each other trying to get from my brain to the paper. Even my shorter pieces were filled with emotion, direction, anger and consciousness. And all it took was a moment or two of purging the jumbled thoughts in my brain, to create these unique verses.

It is different now. Now my mind is filled with the routine. The daily trappings of function, responsibility and duty keep me from allowing my thoughts to wander far enough to be creative. And when I do sit down to write, too many years of composing legal and professional crap, keep me from just allowing the words to freely land where they may. So I don’t write. Because the constant over-analyzing of words that are meant to just BE destroys the very art.

I feel forced to rhyme, to make sense, to say SOMETHING, and in turn, I say NOTHING.

And this failure to let the stream of consciousness just flow has me at an impasse. Do I stop writing all together, because what I write doesn’t measure up, or do I just write, whatever it may be, in order to free the imprisoned inspiration, one chain link at a time?

I will write. And what’s more, I will share it, it is the only way that I will overcome this thing called Writer’s Block.

I will start here:

The words don’t flow as easily
As they did at times before
So I begin to doubt myself
Am I not a writer anymore?

The effort was invisible
The words I’d write so powerful
In mere seconds
I’d create

But now, I pause
I think, I judge
Erase, rewrite
I can’t think straight

Am I a poet
If the rhymes don’t flow
Is it still prose
I can’t make the words grow
Into stanzas

I’m blocked
Blocked by daily life
Blocked by the stress of trying to survive
In a world where creativity does not pay the bills

I give in
Give in to the mundane
Give in to suppressing the magic
Of words in a sequence that could once give me chills

And when I write
I no longer feel as though I was born
To effortlessly direct words and spaces so as
To change the world with my pen

But then I pause
Reread my words, and know with certainty
That although it may take me a bit longer than before
To create…I still can