How to Break a Writer’s Block
Even the best of us sometimes get stuck
I think the obvious answer is to have a 4 shot Americano, without sugar. The pure bitter bite will knock you out of whatever block you’ve gotten yourself into. Don’t try any idiocy with tea or non-caffeinated beverages. The bitter shock is only part of it. The 4 shots of caffeine are what really makes it work.
If that is ineffective, and sometimes you might need even more, then just watch an episode of The Last Kingdom on Netflix. “Destiny is all!” It is, in a way.
One time (I have to admit) even that didn’t work. I was really stuck. I asked Cervantes, but he told me he was busy. Rocinante had a stone in his hoof, and first things first. I gave him his space.
I asked James Joyce next (because I respect his opinion.) He advised me to just make sure I focussed my story on just a single day, and to stick with English. “My experiment was brilliant, but it’s too difficult, and no one reads it after the first chapter.” (He’s right, you know. I gave up, too, although I laughed so hard I cried.)
Henry Miller was kind of fun, though he referred me to the movie adaptation, which was also good, but didn’t answer a damn question about writing!
Shakespeare told me it was Francis Bacon, after all, and go ask him. Needless to say, that didn’t help much, either. Bacon never answers the phone, so what are you going to do?
I thought hard. I wouldn’t ask Norman Mailer, if my life depended on it. Philip Roth was a sweetheart, but when I told him how close we had actually come to The Plot Against America, he got so depressed that I just had to tell him, “I’ll call you back later.”
Well, what would you do, ask Robert Crumb? I couldn’t do that! He’s still alive! (And you can see the angle this story is taking.)
I did talk to Gertrude Stein, who sent me a bouquet of roses, and said I’d get it.
Then I had a lightbulb moment. Of course! Just ask Isaac Bashevis Singer! Why didn’t I think of that before? I called him up on that old rotary dial phone I keep in my mental attic. He said, “Sure, I’ve got some time. Would you like a cup of tea?”
I told him about the 4 shot Americano.
“Let’s not mess with it, then,” he laughed. “The only important thing, really,” he advised me, “is that you have to listen. All the words will show up. That’s all I ever did. Just listen.”
Well, there you go. I don’t speak Yiddish, but you can listen in any language. Maybe it won’t be as funny, but what are you going to do? Gaelic works, too. (TY, Mr. Joyce!) But I don’t know Gaelic, either!
I do know how to cuss in the worst Southern way. When I saw the Coen Brothers’ great movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I cracked up. The totally strange and bizarre way that the blind radio station operator and the Governor of whatever mythical state it is swear and announce what the true meaning of life is … is exactly the way I learned to do it in my Arkansas childhood!
This is important! If you can’t cuss, do you think you can really write? Was Cervantes just some nice guy? And I knew Shakespeare was lying to me. Francis Bacon couldn’t write for shit. I got Gertrude Stein’s 12 red roses, with a note from Anais Nin and Henry Miller, and I cried. I’m not proud. I don’t need to be a tough guy, but … do tears of strength make sense?
They do to me. If love was just a racket, then writing would just be writing, by any other name. And it is. Happy, sad, biting, incisive, those goddamned Sumerians started it all…. And then, WTF did they do? Just up and disappeared.
Like the dinosaurs. What’s this world coming to? I’d like to know. As the Coen Brothers said in that other great movie, Miller’s Crossing, “If you can’t trust a fix, what can you trust?”
I don’t trust nuthin, certainly not myself. Would you trust a writer, drunk on over priced Americanos and talking to dead writers? (Even if they give good advice.) Would you trust a Jewish yokel from Arkansas?
(“I didn’t know there was such a thing.”)
Well, there is. My Grandmother Tillie was born in Czarist Russia and grew up in Mississippi. How unlikely is that? I had 2 strikes against me before my parents ever met.
The rest is my own goddamned fault.
All of us have strange strange quirks, though. You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
That’s why Singer is right: If you just listen, the Universe and all the animals, plants, and people in it, even the rocks and little bugs, will tell you their secrets.
They can’t help it!
And that’s how you get over the worst writer’s block.
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© “John” Lesly Levin 2021
