In writing, the wall can rear up in many ways. It can be a drought of inspiration or motivation; it can be caused by real world intrusions affecting the writing spirit; it can be caused by feedback and the negative feelings that can be associated with any form of critique.
So the key question is: how does one climb the wall?
I am not sure if I have the only answer to that; who does? I don’t think there is just one answer – one way to climb over the wall. Especially given the number of different ways the wall can rise.
I have encountered many walls in the last eight months, and I think I have managed to climb each one although some have been more of a crawling slog and others a light skip.
At the start of lockdown, I was gifted a large amount of time – working from home gave back hours spent in the car; closed restaurants and prohibited travelling freed up my weekends; a travel ban over the Easter holidays stole my week away but gave me hours of writing time. I divided my time between what had to be done for my day job, and exploring different avenues for my works; I set up this website and shot my work off down various different avenues.
Then everything started to slow, and my motivation vanished. During the second half of the summer term, my brain swam with ideas but the resumption of school limited my time, so I counted down to the end of the summer term when I could sit at the desk and work. Cue the 26th July and nothing. I sat down to the white page of horror and couldn’t summon up any ideas. All my grand plans of getting ahead with my work in progress; my university reading; my drafts for the EMA; all vanished in the summer heat. I dabbled with a little reading, procrastinated with other tasks. My ‘to do’ list remained on the clipboard, taunting me.
September soon rolled around and the start date for the university module, and I promised myself I would get ahead. Fortunately, the return to the routine of the Autumn term brought a renewed focus and a healthy dose of motivation. Excellent. So now I was back to work full time and needed to spend all weekend on writing. I am not great at evening working, though I can when the need arises.
Then a stressful few weeks at work, including a period of isolation from school (symptom free on my part thankfully) caused all the motivation and concentration to dry up again - though fortunately, after I had finished and submitted my first assignment. I concentrated on working from home and crossed my fingers in the hope that everyone in the tutor group was as swamped as I. I had again set myself a long to do list of reading and writing experiments to fuel my inspiration for the next few assignments; a list which remained unticked.
I have not yet found a solution for these walls, other than time. And perhaps a change of scenery. A mind-occupying distraction – I am getting quite good at sudoku!
Finally, the dreaded critique. Critique is such a mixed bag because there will always be comments that leave you thinking; it can be hard to move past them and to turn them from something which feels personal into something useful. A piece of writing, especially if you have invested a lot of time and energy, can be something very dear to your heart and so any critique, even positive, can be difficult to read. I have found that the best thing I can do with any form of critique is, again, time. Read it; step away; read it again. Pick out the key points and then see how you can make them work for you. And then make the mental note to proofread the next piece you submit twice more than the last piece!
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