I've just been through a period when life's demands and traumas have almost overwhelmed me. Stretched me to my limits and left no room for anything but service to another. At the same time the novel I've had under submission has not landed and the thought of trying again fills me with hopelessness. My attempts to write short pieces here on Substack (https://coragreenhill.substack.com) have been a welcome outlet, but the technical side of promoting stretches my nerves to breaking point. I need to rest ... and yet ... a barren life starves my life force ... so, I'm resting and vigilant for what might be round the next turning of the path, waiting and practising something, anything ... sketch, paint, doodle, read new authors that excite, go on what good old Julia Cameron called 'artists' dates'. Chat (like on here) and be reminded to be compassionate and gentle with one's curled up sleeping baby dragons.
Tom Paulin once said that everybody needs mooching time. Bertrand Russell got completely stuck trying to solve a problem whilst writing Principia Mathematica and just gave up. He dreamt the answer months later. Th unconscious works in wonderful ways!
If you never wrote again, and there were no more selves to reinvent or discover, you're the author of a kind of prose I had slightly despaired of finding in English, one in which I recognise the sense of delighted revelation that came with first reading Bonnefoy's prose essays, and which I love. I didn't know it could be done in English -- and done in such an unassuming way. So I'll be waiting patiently for the cowled figure to depart and prose or poetry to resume (or start from scratch), and if I spot him, I'll try directing him to some very prolific figure who surely needs a bit of a rest...
Such a relief to read this from you. I am also in a fallow place, and am thinking I need to take my attention out to fresh places - read others, let myself rest and dream, walk without trying to find anything.
Dealing with the muse, placating her, enticing her--bribery even--ah more metaphor--as I dig underneath the fallow soil to find the grubs busy at work--This read made my morning--Thank you!
There's always a poem - a lot of poems, let's get real - hanging about just waiting for the knockout thought to jig them into life and then, re-visiting, I'm off again on another track. Never fails!
If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings. https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
"If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings." https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
"If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings" .https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
"If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings" .https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
I've just been through a period when life's demands and traumas have almost overwhelmed me. Stretched me to my limits and left no room for anything but service to another. At the same time the novel I've had under submission has not landed and the thought of trying again fills me with hopelessness. My attempts to write short pieces here on Substack (https://coragreenhill.substack.com) have been a welcome outlet, but the technical side of promoting stretches my nerves to breaking point. I need to rest ... and yet ... a barren life starves my life force ... so, I'm resting and vigilant for what might be round the next turning of the path, waiting and practising something, anything ... sketch, paint, doodle, read new authors that excite, go on what good old Julia Cameron called 'artists' dates'. Chat (like on here) and be reminded to be compassionate and gentle with one's curled up sleeping baby dragons.
Love it👏
Tom Paulin once said that everybody needs mooching time. Bertrand Russell got completely stuck trying to solve a problem whilst writing Principia Mathematica and just gave up. He dreamt the answer months later. Th unconscious works in wonderful ways!
If you never wrote again, and there were no more selves to reinvent or discover, you're the author of a kind of prose I had slightly despaired of finding in English, one in which I recognise the sense of delighted revelation that came with first reading Bonnefoy's prose essays, and which I love. I didn't know it could be done in English -- and done in such an unassuming way. So I'll be waiting patiently for the cowled figure to depart and prose or poetry to resume (or start from scratch), and if I spot him, I'll try directing him to some very prolific figure who surely needs a bit of a rest...
I'm right in the heart of that process and have published 3 articles about it on my substack https://substack.com/home/post/p-162255007
Such a relief to read this from you. I am also in a fallow place, and am thinking I need to take my attention out to fresh places - read others, let myself rest and dream, walk without trying to find anything.
Dealing with the muse, placating her, enticing her--bribery even--ah more metaphor--as I dig underneath the fallow soil to find the grubs busy at work--This read made my morning--Thank you!
There's always a poem - a lot of poems, let's get real - hanging about just waiting for the knockout thought to jig them into life and then, re-visiting, I'm off again on another track. Never fails!
Thank you Kathleen for offering wise company during fallow times!
If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings. https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
Ex nihilo pulchritudo
"If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings." https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
"If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings" .https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
"If I ever get that blocked feeling, I tend to consider the strange case of John Ferrar Holms – both as a consolation (things have never got that bad) and as the most awful of warnings" .https://jonathanlaw.substack.com/p/john-ferrar-holms
Words for Dr Y
Arid