A Pause

“Do you ever get writer’s block?”

I can’t count the number of times I heard that question, mostly when standing before of a gym full of wiggly elementary students.  (I used to wonder how the concept could have so permeated our culture that even grade school kids thought writer’s block was as real as the flu.)

My answer was something like, “Sometimes I have to pause to fill up again, but I never call it ‘writer’s block.’  Calling it that gives it too much negative power.”

And I believed what I said.  Truly.

Yet I also remember times—too many of them—when having just finished some major project, I floated through the emptiness that followed saying to anyone who cared to listen, “I’m never going to write again.  I know it!” 

(I remember doing that only because my partner once replied, wryly, “Yes, I know.  You say that every time.”  I was astonished.  I had, in that moment, no idea I had ever faced such a chasm before, let alone complained about it.)

But still, call it writer’s block?  Never!

These days, though, the pause grows longer, the fear of never filling up again, more real.  How much time do I have left to wait for the next idea to arrive anyway? 

I began a new novel a couple of years ago, taking off from a concept that had good energy for me.

Here are the opening lines:

She was a girl.

Just an ordinary girl.

Except for the wings.

It’s a nice opening, don’t you think?

The emotional foundation for the story came from a fantasy I used to carry around with me when I was very young, one in which I was that ordinary girl with wings.  Angel wings.  Along with the wings came long, filmy dresses in the palest of blues, like ice, or the almost pink of cotton candy.  And to go with the angel dress, my thick, taffy-blonde hair was released from its tight braids and flowed down my back without ever tangling.  (That last was fantasy indeed!  I don’t know whether hair conditioner didn’t exist back then or if my mother just didn’t know about it.)

In my daydream, I no longer had to trudge the hot mile into town to reach the municipal swimming pool.  I flew.  When I got there, my wings propelled me through the blue water as neatly as they had carried me through the air.  I even had rubber covers to protect my feathers.

I forgot about that dream as I grew, of course, but as dreams do—at least as they do for those of us who write for children—the wings came back one day as fuel for a story.  And I decided to use them to launch into a new novella.  This story is set not just in my fantasy world but in the very real time of my early childhood.  World War II.  Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.

My fantasy wings served me well.  At least at first.  Jenny, my character, was thrilled when they sprouted.  Then disconcerted to discover how huge and heavy wings could be, how very much in the way . . . the beginnings of a story problem.  Once she realized that no one in her family could even see her magnificent, awkward wings, the hook was set and my story launched.

Except . . . it turned out to be the wrong story.  I hadn’t intended to write about an unseen child.  This story was supposed to be about a girl’s loss of her father, first to the war and then to his returning home from that war deeply altered, one of those soldiers whose lives were saved by the amazing and appalling atom bomb.

Yet . . . I loved those wings.  I loved those opening lines, as well!

What to do?

Many times I have had to repeat to myself words I once offered so freely to my students.  In this case, it was, “Sometimes the most creative act of all is letting go, just opening your hand and allowing an idea you love to float away.  Even when that idea has been the starting point for your whole story.”

But I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t! 

So I went on turning the story over, setting it aside, coming back to it again.  Setting it aside once more.

Until the day came when I was in the basement sorting books for a promised donation and a book I had quite forgotten fell off the shelf.  One of my first early readers.  Alison’s Wings.  I picked it up.  Read it.  Even liked it.  (I rarely read my old work and am never certain I will like it if I do.  But I read it and I liked it.)

When I put that book down, I knew.  I had already milked the juice out of those wings.

So . . . what do you do with a story that’s lost its heart?

Throw it away?

Or another question entirely.  What do you do when so much of what you once dreamed has already been made into stories?

Do you call what follows Writer’s Block?  Capital W?  Capital B?

Or is all this too inevitable to be called anything at all . . . except being old.

A moment that simply is what it is. 

A pause.