Creative block

Of late I have had a complete writers block, a dry barrel for music composition and meager threads for writing verse – not a very good period.

I’ve been wondering what’s responsible for this particular malaise. Last year I finished my degree in French – a qualification that kept me permanently at the creative pump as I had to turn out an essay a month. I thought as soon as I didn’t have to do that anymore my creativity would fly back into the room on easy wings of inspiration! Not quite!

Since then we’ve had the end of the Mayan calendar (nothing), Christmas and many days when I thought I’d be able to get started.

Oh, I could blame the permanent rain, the dreadful commute to my current day job or some other lack but I have happily written over these kind of blocks before.

I’ve always believed that you have to keep creating to be creative. That is, rather than expect something to jump in to your mind randomly you have to cultivate a habit, create space for the seed to land and prepare yourself to recognize it when you get it. With that in mind I’m going to attempt to stamp on my tiresome self censorship and just write any old stuff to get the wheels turning. As Allen Ginsberg says: ‘we’re free to write anything we want as long as we don’t show it to anyone…’.

Here I go….