Accept help and help yourself. Edit your writing.Write. Walk away and let it age. Edit. Rinse and repeat.Accept other people’s editing ideas. I have heardmany writers get upset when their copy is edited. Iwelcome editing! If someone is willing to combthrough my work and get the tangles out, I am happyand grateful. Yes, sometimes the meaning can get inadvertentlychanged, but overall, editing has savedand polished me more than it has hurt me. Accepthelp graciously.Finally, try writing in a genre you don’t normally use. Itmay open up a new window for you or help you expandand improve the way you do write in your genreof choice. I wrote a poem at the end of my cancercoping book and have gotten lots of feedback fromreaders who enjoyed it:Cancer Survivorship Coping Tools –We'll get you through thisHearing the words “You have cancer” can be devastating—somecancer patients even say that theemotional pain and loss of certainty from hearingthis are worse than the pains from the cancer, surgeries,radiation, chemotherapy, and other treatments.This is the intimate journey of a melanoma andbreast cancer survivor who honestly, and sometimeseven humorously, shares her own story and offerssupportive emotional tools to help people diagnosedwith cancer, and their loved ones and caregivers,work through the emotional pain and upheaval of acancer diagnosis. You will be supported in knowingwhat it feels like to hear you have cancer and be givena variety of helpful ideas to start feeling betterwhether you are newly diagnosed, in treatment, ormonths or years after treatment. If you are a caregiver,friend, or family member who wants to help,you will get a better understanding of the cancerexperience as well as tools to help the person youcare about.For any woman who has been diagnosed with breastcancer, information is vital. But more important, itneeds to be good information. Barb's book morethan qualifies!~ Julie Edstrom, breast cancer survivor, supportgroupfacilitator and spiritual directorNever give up. Never stop expressing yourself throughyour craft. You are a unique and empowered individualwith something important to share with thosearound you. As George Eliot says, “What do we livefor if not to make life less difficult for each other?” Soget out there and write, write, write!Barbara Tako is a breast cancer su rvivorsince 2010 and a melanoma survivor since 2014. Shespeaks in the U.S. and writes at CureToday.com/community and Cancer.net. Since 1998, BarbaraTako has been a professional seminar leader, speaker,and published writer on clutter clearing and organizing,appearing on television, radio, and othermedia venues across the country. Her books areavailable on Amazon and wherever books are sold.Reach Barbara atwww.cancersurvivorshipcopingtools.com orwww.clutterclearingchoices.com26
Summer <strong>2015</strong>Let Your Unconscious Help You OvercomeYour Writer's BlockClarke W. OwensThe term "writer's block"seems a bit of a cliché tome. Do other professionshave "blocks"? Is theresuch a thing as "teacher'sblock"? "Lawyer's block"?"Doctor's block"?Why do aspiring writers allow themselves the luxury ofclaiming to be "blocked" when they can't think of a way tokeep writing? (And isn't it mostly aspiring writers whocomplain of it?)One thinks of the term as applying mainly to longerforms, like the novel. One is writing along, and suddenly inchapter thirteen, or chapter fifty-five, zam! The blockcomes down. You're stuck. You don't know where to gowith it.Suppose it was only a little old poem you were writing.You wrote about half the poem, and you couldn't think ofa way to resolve it – tie up the metaphor, give it somepunch, make it work. Would you say you were "blocked"?Or would you say, "Maybe it's not a poem"? Would youconsider shelving it altogether?I believe a novel – although entirely different from apoem in most respects – is no different from a poem insofaras it's either going to work or it isn't. And it's entirelypossible to begin a long project like a novel, and then torealize midway through that it isn't going to work. It wasimproperly conceived. There's not enough research ordeep knowledge in it. The characters aren't cooperating.The whole thing is turning to wood.So my first feeling about "writer's block" is that it mightbe a sign that the project is not a good one. You need (orat least I need) to know when to give up.That doesn't mean you give up every time you hit asnag. It means you keep your critical and self-critical sensesin operation, and you use them as necessary to get abetter result. Write only poems that are poems, only novelsthat are novels. Be like a sculptor, and cut away everythingthat isn't the art you're seeking.The critical mind is the opposite brain from the creativeone. The creative one is the unconscious.Have you noticed how free language is in a dream, orwhen you're waking from sleep? What about those dreamimages? Wild, aren't they? Yet if you analyze them, theynearly always do what Freud said they do: they multi-taskon an anxiety or a wish.The unconscious mind layers images over the anxietywith as much meaning as possible. Multiple images representthe same area of concern, while each image containsmultiple points of possible reference. That's exactly whatyou want a poetic image to do. That's a good thing for storylines to do.The critical mind kills this process. You can't think apoem into existence. You have to be open to experience,and open to language. With a novel, you have to be openfor a long time, and the subject has to marinate in its layersof contemplation and study until it's ready to emergeas plot, character, voice, narrative line.In the process of spinning out the yarn, there will betimes when the story seems tied up in a knot, and unwillingto go further. What do you do?I suggest you sleep on it.Don't try to figure it out. Just try to understand thenature of the snafu. Character X is poised to commit Act Y,but Character X has been developed in such a way thatshe would never do that. What has happened? How canwe fix this? Should we just plunge on, and have CharacterX commit Act Y, when it's totally out of character?No. Your critical sense is trying to tell you something.It's saying, "Don't go there. It won't work." But your criticalsense does not tell you where to go. The critical sensedoes not perform that function.The Unconscious does.Think about the nature of the problem. Then, stop analyzingit. Go to sleep. Your unconscious mind will work onit, just like it works on all your daily problems, anxieties,fears, and conflicts. Nine times out of ten, in the morning,you will wake up with a completely new idea about how toresolve the issue."Wow!" you'll say. "I didn't even think of that."No, you didn't think of that when you were worryingabout Character X and Act Y, because that was your criticalfaculty doing the thinking. But at night, when your Unconsciouswas percolating, running wild programs throughyour problems to come up with solutions, creation tookplace. You realize now what you had no clue about lastnight when you went to bed, namely, It's not necessary forCharacter X to engage in Act Y. Character X can engage inAct Z – and that's exactly what she would do.…Or whatever the solution is.The point is, if you leave it alone, the solution willcome to you in your sleep. This has happened to me moretimes than I can count. When it does, I'm always amazedat how creative the unconscious mind is, and how effortlesslyit solves seemingly insoluble problems.I've come to realize that a creative problem is onlyseemingly insoluble because the perception of such problemsoccurs to the critical part of the brain, which isproperly trained to be aware of such things. It's not part ofthe critical brain's sphere of influence to know how to fixthe problem – only to be aware of it, and to define it consciously.Once you realize this, there really is no writer's block. Ifyou are really blocked and your dreaming mind can't resolvethe issue, it means the project is bad and should beabandoned for another one. But don't give up until bothhalves of your brain have looked at the issue!Clarke W. Owens is the author of a novel, "600 PPM," anda book of literary criticism, "Son of Yahweh." His poemsfrequently appear in literary journals. He lives in ruralOhio. Visit his web site at www.clarkewowens.com .27
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