On Writer's Block...

Basically, it sucks.

I know, I didn't really have to say that. The connotation alone is enough to give people nightmares. The thing is, I don't really think anyone just runs out of things to say. Think about how much we experience in just a day, or a week, or a year. And all those experiences garner emotions and reactions and trigger dialogue and discussion. So with all that goes on, there should be something to write about, right?

That's the funny part. We have plenty to say, but the block comes in how to say it. It's finding out how to communicate the deeper level of what we're trying to say...and making it sound good -- that's what kills us. It's what makes me crazy when I hear something on the radio and end up thinking to myself, 'Now why couldn't I think of it that way?? It can't be that hard to write something like that.' And I end up beating myself up over an Avril Lavigne song, questioning my ability to ever write a great line again.

In my past experience, writing has just happened. I haven't just sat down and said, 'OK, today, I'm going to write a song.' People ask me that sometimes, how I write, and I feel like I get off easy...like sometimes the songs just write themselves. At the risk of sounding pretentious, that's really how my best songs have come out...they've just come out. I'm just lucky enough to have a pen and paper handy. Well, most of the time. If I had a nickel for every great song that has come and gone in the flash of a few seconds in my mind...

So maybe the writing is like finding love over and over again. When you're not in it, you swear it doesn't exist...you swear that you'll never be able to write anything that gives you butterflies ever again. And then a line, or a song, or a verse makes its way into your heart, totally out of the blue, when you least expect it, and you can't imagine you ever doubted yourself. Maybe mine isn't a block of the mind, but a crisis of faith. Maybe it's just believing that the right music and the right words will find me again, and having an open enough mind to let them.

I guess the hardest part is just waiting for that flash of clarity...for that brilliant moment of really finding the right thing to say. I read on a t-shirt once that one of the greatest things was 'writing something the way it needs to be written in order for it to say what you want to say.' That, my friends, is the opposite of writer's block. That is creative satisfaction at its best, and what we're all hoping for in the end, no matter how we try to say things; whether it is through sculpture, music, poetry, fiction, or oils on canvas. We all just want to be accurately represented. We all just want to be heard.

But in order to be heard, we first have to find something to say...