I generally reserve Wednesdays for blogging, because the end of the week is busier, but today, I find myself wondering what to write about. 

It’s likely a spread of the “writer’s block” that has permeated most of the rest of my writing life. It’s more like a silty fog than a blockade on the road. I can still delve into old poems/stories and revise them; I just haven’t been able to generate anything new that feels worth keeping.  

So instead of writing, I’ve been using the time to pour through my lists of submission opportunities, dragging out poems and stories, reading them through, working on a few and then putting things together in batches to send on Submittable. This is not terrible. I’m still spending time with my words; I’m just not birthing new ones.  But I’m missing the thrill of the generative process, saying something that feels important and urgent in the moment–something that matters.

I’m pretty sure the reason I’m feeling blocked is that I just don’t want to access the deep feelings lurking below the surface–my anger, fear and despair at all that’s happening in the world, tinted with the residue of grief from my father’s recent death. It’s not even that I’m feeling a need to write directly about these things, but to write anything of substance still requires a journey outside the carefully constructed contours of my world that I’ve struggled to hold front and center–even as I feel gratitude for having the reassurance of that world: the smiling greenery, the flowering trees, my friends and family, financial and food security.

Today, in writing group, a quote from Percival Everett’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel James, a brilliant and poignant retelling of Huck Finn from the enslaved character Jim’s point of view:

I did not look away. I wanted to feel the anger. I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it. 

And I realized that somehow I need to befriend my anger, my sadness, rather than keep it as a barely visible apparition on the other side of the fog. And then, simply brace myself, as the dam erupts, letting the rush of water and words spew forward.

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Seven summers ago I took a canoe trip in the boundary waters in northern Minnesota, a state that seems to have found its way into the spotlight with the selection of its Governor Tim Walz for Vice President on the Democratic ticket.

For days we paddled in a quiet dreamscape, rarely seeing another canoe. No Google Maps here. To get from lake to lake, you needed to consult a large laminated map, where the portage spots were little dots that you needed to approximate by looking at the shape of the lake, the shape of the map, the shape of the lake, back and forth until you spotted it…a small break in the tree-line that just possibly could be a path to the next lake.

We discovered the hard way that once we docked the boat, it was a  good idea to take a few steps down the path to make sure it really was a path before carrying the canoe and all our heavy gear. We had a few false starts and a few longer-than-expected portages where I began to wonder if I was on a canoeing trip or a hiking trip that involved carrying canoes.

But, on the whole, things went smoothly–until the last night, where all the campsites on the lake we planned to stop at were full. So even though it was late and we were tired, we portaged to the next lake–where there were still no empty campsites.

“Why don’t we ask someone if they’re willing to share,” I suggested. The areas marked for camping were huge… big enough for many tents. As a New Yorker used to crowds and small spaces, that seemed like the obvious solution. But my companions–all Minnesota born and bred–were not as wild about the idea of intruding on other people.

So we went on to the next lake. The campsites were still full. And it was getting dark.

Finally, we asked a nice family if we could share, and chatted with them a bit before braving the swarms of dusk-ruling mosquitoes as we quickly put up our tents and cached our food.

The mosquitoes were so bad that my sister-in-law hung a mosquito net over the “outhouse” (i.e. stand-alone toilet). It felt like a little boudoir. Still the goal was no liquids after sundown–get into your tent, and try not to have to come out and pee until morning.

I started thinking about this trip again several days ago–before all the Tim Walz hoopla, especially the challenge of finding those hidden portage paths. Because lately a lot of my writing life feels like I’m circling around the lake, unsure of where the exits are that will take me to the next step on my journey.

Each day I consider three projects that all will require some heavy-lifting: a revision of my piano memoir to potentially make it more “prescriptive,” a YA novel that I seemed to have sputtered to a halt on, and a new collection of poems that needs polishing and shaping, as well as some more overall conceptualization. Instead of diving into any of them, I’ve done some minor picking away, and then mostly pivoted to revising individual poems (not necessarily in the collection), sending out submissions, engaging in small social media marketing, and writing blog posts–haha! Then I’ve spent the rest of the day in the garden picking string beans and cherry tomatoes, pulling weeds, and trying to make space among the overgrown beds of irises and lambs ears. My shoulders are aching!

But my mind’s eye is on the memory of those small breaks in the bushes of the boundary waters, because I know that eventually I WILL find the right path to the next lake with all of these projects.

In the meantime, LFG Walz & Harris!

***

For anyone interested, I had a poem about this trip, Lessons in Portaging, published in What Rough Beast, which was a daily on-line publication of resistance-oriented poems from the years of He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named. We’re NOT going back! (Another writers block activity I’ve been doing is writing letters and postcards.)

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