Recently in the Book Writing World there seems to be a lot of chatter about writer’s block and a lull that washes over you right after finishing a big project, let’s say, your novel or memoir. I have the lull, and I’m not even done yet. ☺
My BWW colleague James Black had an antidote to this dream-state by jumping right back into writing by working on a short story while he awaits critique of his newly finished novel. There is something to be said about this: Great job! Fantastic!
As writers, we should WRITE every day. No exceptions.
We don’t have to plunge into our next novel or raison d’etre (many thanks to the FB chatter of my former classmates from Jordan High School in Durham, N.C., reminding me of the comic nightmare otherwise known as four years of French class) but we have to write down something. And it has to be something more substantial than a to-do list (unless it’s a writer’s to-do list filled with ideas of scenes that need to be written) or a check for the water bill.
The wonderful writers at the BWW have my back, and I’m grateful. One of them kicked my butt the other day for whining and I was forced to practice this blog that I’m preaching right now.
Here’s the poem I wrote, and it has prompted me to jump back in to my novel (still in progress), Shadow Gardens:
Birdsong (fashioned after Natasha Tretheway’s poem Myth)
This songbird is stifled in the heat
of the moment that will not end.
Nothing left to sing on this day,
she breathes in the night with her eyes
dim and she cannot find her kin.
She exhales her song now diminished –
eggs smaller than berries at the stump
and rusting leaves on the ground, all
things fall but so too they must land.
*
Things fall but so too they must land
and rusting leaves on the ground, all
eggs smaller than berries at the stump.
She exhales her song, diminished now,
dim and she cannot find her kin.
She breathes in the night with her eyes.
Nothing left to sing on this day,
of the moment that will not end,
this songbird is stifled in the heat.
What do you need to do today that will enable you to write?
Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan and will be reading some of her recently published work on April 9 at the Sacramento Poetry Center in CA.