Roughing it around the edges

"Life is the dynamic, creative edge of reality." - Eric Parslow

Over the years, I have become intimately familiar with the intimidating spectre of writer’s block, and explored a variety of ways in which to deal with it.

At university, for example, I perfected my already-well-practised art of allowing the deadline for essays to loom so threateningly large that it finally eclipsed all other fears or considerations, and forced me into the kind of all-night, cookie-and-caffeine-fuelled binge-write that left me feeling bleary-eyed and juddering with excess sugar the next morning (and praying that I could find a bloody printer that would work).

What kind of “solution” is that, you might wonder? Surely that’s far more to do with other innate problems, such as a youthful preoccupation with socialising and pleasure-seeking, or perhaps plain laziness? And, sure, I’m happy to hold my hands up and acknowledge the truth in both of those accusations (also aided, in no small part, by the amount of alcohol that I very much enjoyed consuming in those days).

Believing what I do now about creative flow, however, I can look back on my teenage actions and see that this was an excellent, albeit unconscious, tactic that did the necessary job very well. I was forcing my thinking mind into such a state of panic that it became willing to leap aside and allow my creativity to climb into the driver’s (or writer’s) seat.

Creativity doesn’t actually require thinking, you see; in fact, thinking often gets right in the way, wanting to distract me with the intricacies of the editing process before any narrative has been allowed to unfold. Find a way to suspend thinking, however, and time shoots past unheeded, as I become wholly absorbed in what I am doing and words flood onto the page - words that, upon reading back later, I often find myself wondering where they came from.

Did I write that?

Now, there’s a question to ponder. Did I?

Over the intervening years, my tactics have become rather less panic-and-caffeine-fuelled, as I cultivated awareness of my over-thinking mind and its tendency to sabotage my creative work (and all sorts of other aspects of my life, really - but we’ll look at that another time).

Writer’s block, I have learned, is not an enemy to overcome, but a potential ally that can supply useful information to guide me on my path. A messenger, whom shooting would be an arrogant, egoic mistake.

These days, my favourite approach is to dialogue directly with my block - generally through writing - to find out what lies at the heart of it, uncovering the real issues, so that I can decide how to tackle them.

For example:

Do I have a fear of failure?

Time to address my perfectionist and remind her how the world really works: to point out that failure need not be a final destination, merely a temporary stop on the path to success; to explain how we cannot know and plan everything beforehand, but need to discover aspects of creation along the way; to encourage her to return to the childhood-genius art of play.

In short, all art starts rough around the edges; the smoothing process comes later.

Am I seeking comfort in my procrastinations? (A classic for me is over-eating chocolate.)

This is a sign that there are deeper fears at play. Perhaps what I want to do is likely to bring me face-to-face with uncomfortable truths, which I shall need to address, or integrate in some way. The prospect of such change alarms my ego, which tries to distract me by wrapping me up in a dopamine-infused comfort zone.

Sometimes, here, the only way out is through. A conscious acceptance of where I am at, combined with a commitment to noticing every time this coping mechanism occurs. On the other side of the comfort zone may come a renewed willingness to “rough it”, embracing the inconvenient unknown.

—

I am writing about this here for the simple reason that I have been experiencing a lot of resistance to writing here.

I know that this can partly be explained by an essential stage of my natural creative cycle, which sends me deep within to gestate for a while, before the words are ready to flow.

I know that other parts of the reason involve my (usual) fears mentioned above.

But I have also become aware that the very nature of what I am writing about demands something else from me in my writing process; something new. An acknowledgement of exactly what I am doing here, and why.

What am I doing here?

I am writing about my “reluctant spiritual journey”.

Why?

I feel driven to share my experiences and beliefs, partly because I feel that others may resonate with some aspects of it, and partly because of that mysterious impulse that sometimes guides me, which offers me no logical reason to do something, but compels me to do it anyway.

The uncompromising word that springs to mind is the simple one that continues to shake my shuddering, would-be secular ego: faith.

Which inspires another, uncomfortable question that I sense lies at the heart of my current block:

How can I turn my writing into an act of devotion?

Writing publicly in this place, on this topic, demands more of me than the kind of ruminating consideration that my mind is happy to give to a rough first draft of a perhaps-to-be-book. Writing here is not merely the clarification of my changing belief system, it is part of my commitment to it; in itself an act of faith. Something within wants me to acknowledge this, and to consciously approach my writing here accordingly, with an attitude not merely of focus and commitment, but also of reverence and service.

I feel a lot of resistance in writing this. My ego loathes it. Can’t you find some other words? it wails. You sound so… religious.

Unfortunately for my ego, this is exactly the challenging creative edge that I have learned to trust; the terrifying, truthful location in which I find more of what I am always fundamentally chasing in life.

If cracks are where the light gets in, edges - especially the rough ones - are where I get to grow.