Mandalas and Suitcases: The What and Why of This Blog

There is no worse feeling than writer's block. I know from experience. I didn't write for almost three years after leaving New York City. I was so used to being part of a vibrant artistic community that I didn't know how write without one. (I was also really busy working as a mortician, but I digress,  and it's too early in the morning for gory details.) To fill the wordless void, I spent most of my time doing things like taking advantage of suburban prices on designer merchandise at TJ Maxx and attending bucolic events that look cool on instagram, like zucchini festivals. Over the past year, I've slowly fought my way back to the page (some days are better than others) and I (like everyone else on the internet) am currently working on a novel.

You know when you go to a music festival or something and you leave your sweater in the car because it's surprisingly nice out? You know the walk back to the car, which is somehow much longer than the walk there, when it's dark and not warm out anymore, and your mouth is kind of dry and icky from craft beer? Yeah, that's what writing after a long block feels like.

I kept searching for resources that might help me trick myself into getting something, anything, down on paper. I read writing books. I followed writing prompt blogs on tumblr. I even took a community education class, but none of these methods were sparking much of anything for me. The exercises usually relied on various tropes. Inevitably, there would be a prompt centering around a found suitcase full of money, or some other high-stakes Hitchcockian thing. Cool, if you want to write Breaking Bad fan fiction, which I kind of do, but it's tentatively titled "Breaking Good: Jesse Starts a Non-Profit" and the suitcases are filled with love and puppies and there's holes poked in the suitcases so that the puppies can breathe.

The alternative to the action trope is the overly self-reflective exercise: write a letter to your inner child, write a letter to your inner critic, write a love letter to yourself. Cool, but I'm a cognitive behaviorist who delights in snark. I'm obsessed with economy, and this school of thought seemed hinged on trussing your piece up in a mohair sweater and then typing yourself a hug. One particularly reflective book encouraged the reader to draw a mandala, which basically put me off writing for weeks. It actually put me off pretty everything, come to think of it. I didn't shower much during that time period and just kind of wandered around in my pajamas, eating Cheerios out the box, mumbling "fuck mandalas."
After I recovered from the mandala episode, I noticed a theme. All of the exercises and prompts I came across wanted to tell me what to write about. I had three years worth of ideas to draw from. The what wasn't the problem. It was the how that I needed to relearn.

I started developing some of my own exercises. Small, fun challenges I could give myself, things that would generate something different from the patterns I've been circling around for years. A non-visual un-mandala, if you will.

I write daily now. Sometimes it's joyful, but that's like once every three weeks. Most of the time it actually sucks and I'd rather be doing anything else in the world (save for drawing a mandala.) But you know what sucks more? Not doing it. Having all the words lock inside you to the point where you can't even hold a simple conversation with a stranger.
It will always be a process. I'm not satisfied with the post I'm writing right now. I hate my novel. I don't think my poetry is growing at all. I'm convinced everything I write is purple prose. But I plod on, and so will you. Not all of the ideas on this blog will necessarily speak to you, but I'm hoping that some of them will. They're just rough outlines, meant to be rejected and altered as you see fit. Even if nothing on this blog does it for you, write something today. Even if it's three words, write something. Don't draw a mandala.