Forum / Not writing

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Sep 02, 01:24pm

  A wasp rises to its papery
  nest under the eaves
  where it daubs

  at the gray shape,
  but seems unable
  to enter its own house.

  -Jane Kenyon

• 
  Joani Reese

  Sep 02, 02:34pm

  I am with you right now, Sam. Yes.

• 
  Julie Innis

  Sep 02, 02:44pm

  me too.

• 
  Gary Hardaway

  Sep 02, 04:18pm

  After great pain a formal feeling comes—
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs—

  
The stiff Heart questions—was it He that bore?
And yesterday—or centuries before?
  The feet mechanical
Go round a wooden way
Of ground or air or Ought, regardless grown,
A quartz contentment like a stone.
  This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow—
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Sep 02, 07:42pm

  Writing has illuminated some dark paths I've been forced to tread recently. Call it youthful brashness.

  Inundate yourself in your hindrances. Feel every bit of it every moment.

  See also #8, #10 and #19 and don't think "easier said than done": http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/464

  Also: Aside from being living papermakers, wasps have stingers, are emblazoned with warnings of their nature. Dangerous at all ends. A perfectly relatable insect for a writer.

• 
  Darryl Price

  Sep 02, 07:46pm

  Yeah we all want to turn our heads and pretend that it's not always staring us in the face,but, I don't know, seems to me that a lot of writers have the courage to stare right back.Some find beauty in it. Some comedy. Better I think than overwhelming fear in any case, which only tends to paralyse and dismantle any natural ebb and flow of the continual story line that extends out in all directions.

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Sep 02, 09:59pm

  What DP says...

  Write... block... write... block... it's all part of the process. Enjoy the down time. Peace...

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Sep 12, 11:24am

  We all go through this. We all need the time to step away from it before we can come back.

• 
  Deborah Oster Pannell

  Sep 12, 08:25pm

  I ebb and flow all the time... I don't like it, but there it is...

• 
  Robert Vaughan

  Sep 12, 09:32pm

  Miss your words, Sam. Miss you more. Sending you only the best vibes.

• 
  Sally Houtman

  Sep 13, 03:34am

  Is a writer ever really 'not writing'?

  Observing...mulling...processing...

  All necessary and part of the process, whether it's on the page or not.

  You can't give birth (to anything of substance anyway) without a gestation period of sorts.

• 
  Joani Reese

  Sep 13, 09:57pm

  Sally's right. I was walking along a balcony overlooking the library's 1st floor at the college today when a well-built, sad looking boy passed beneath me sporting a huge shiner. Seeing his poor eye made me suddenly terribly sad and then I wondered how I could use that image and that sadness in a new piece. We are sponges, and sometimes we simply need to soak up our surroundings for a while, but it still feels better to be in the zone, oblivious to everything but the screen slowly filling with words that seem to appear so easily, thoughts pouring out unobstructed by our piddly self-awareness.

• 
  John Riley

  Sep 13, 11:12pm

  I once had a girl break up with me because writers are a little cruel. Her words. She said I was always a little bit to the side, never fully engaged, as though I was evaluating everything that happened. That it took an inability to be totally emphatic to be a writer and she didn't like it. She was probably ditching me for a better looking, richer guy, maybe even one with a car, but who knows? Maybe she had a point.

• 
  Dolemite

  Sep 13, 11:19pm

  Every writer's a weirdo, but not every weirdo's a writer...

• 
  Joani Reese

  Sep 13, 11:22pm

  John-- It was the car.

• 
  Gary Hardaway

  Sep 14, 07:45pm

  Artists tend to see the world as a place to pick up parts they need in order make something new even if the new is only in the way the parts are assembled. When I think of Joseph Cornell, I feel better about this fact and thus about myself and other artists.

• 
  James Claffey

  Sep 14, 08:07pm

  great moment JP. yes, we are sponges, indeed!

• 
  Michael Gillan Maxwell

  Sep 16, 04:38pm

  Another extremely stimulating and thought provoking thread. Sam ~ absolutely gorgeous poem to cite as a metaphor. What a brilliant piece that is and how apropos relative to my own rhythms over the past two months. Sally, Joani and Gary ~ your thoughts resonate with me here. Miss you Sam. Be well!

• 
  Niya C. Sisk

  Sep 21, 10:52pm

  Me too. Although I'm changing that today - after a 4 month hiatus.

• 
  Dolemite

  Sep 22, 08:27pm

  "Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal, fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work."

  --Thomas Carlyle

• 
  Estelle Bruno

  Sep 24, 08:58pm

  So sad Sam, but so much truth.

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