writer’s block | D. Dina Friedman

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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I’ve fallen in love with a new Chopin Nocturne I’m learning, Op. 9, No. 2. There are a few different versions of this on youtube, but my favorite is this one by Tiffany Poon. Sometimes it’s hard to listen to professional pianists play the pieces I’m learning, as they remind me, even after I get the basics down, how far away I am from ever playing with such fluidity and ease.

A friend of mine who is co-authoring a book I’m editing writes about his past experience with writers block: I labored under the mistaken notion that writing was a gift from the muse, he says. You either had that gift or you didn’t–and obviously and sadly, I wasn’t one of the chosen few. This is how I feel about piano, except that when I was a child my parents and extended family led me to believe that because I had perfect pitch, I was one of the chosen few. But I couldn’t actualize “that gift” because my fingers were never as good as my ear, especially in a performance setting. I played exactly one piano recital when I was nine–a special concert for “teachers’ best pupils” in a fancy hall in New York City–and it was an unqualified disaster, as I wrote about in detail in an earlier post: Reframing a Past Mess-Up.

I want to feel that spending the last three years returning to piano, a process that has required not only frequent practicing but also a deep dive into my family history in order to decode and defuse a long line of harmful generational messages, would put me past some of my performance anxiety. However, I don’t play the piano if anyone other than my husband, Shel, is in the house. (And if he went out more, I’d probably wait until he was gone, as well.) Even as I’ve managed to turn the screech of my inner music critic down to a low murmur and generate enjoyment from my own flawed renditions, I’m terrified of anyone else’s judgment. So, it was an odd leap of faith to impulsively ask my visiting younger child, Raf–who is a professional musician, nonetheless–if they wanted to hear this new piece I loved and was in the middle of learning. I could do this–even if it made me more vulnerable, I told myself.

How wrong I was.

Man sitting on a chair covering his ears. Earworm concept, also know as brainworm, sticky music, or stuck song syndrome. <a href=”https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/places.html”>Earworm Concept. Man Sitting on a Chair Covering His Ears. – depositphotos.com</a>

Even though I could already play the piece decently with just a few rough spots, knowing Raf was listening made me miss the easy notes as well as the hard ones. My baseline totally fell apart and it seemed to be a matter of chance as to whether I was going to hit the right chords or the wrong ones. Keep playing! I told myself, even as I could barely breathe. Focus on the expression–why you love this piece. Somehow, I managed to finesse the melody, finally landing pianissimo on the last few chords, their soft reverberations calming my shaky insides.

It will be a long time before I do that again, I said to myself. But something had shifted. Unlike the time I was nine, the minute I stood up and walked away from the piano bench, I left the incident behind me. My inner critic didn’t take this little blip as a chance to screech with delight. It stayed at its current murmuring level, which I could easily drown out the next time I tackled the Chopin.

My friend writes about writers’ block, Now I accept without pain that I am a reasonably competent writer. I don’t need to be special in order to enjoy the writing I produce. While I prefer to use “aspiring,” rather than “reasonably competent” to describe my musicianship, the last sentence rings true. I don’t need to be special in order to enjoy my piano playing. Even if I may not be ready to play for others very often–or at all; for myself, I can play well enough to express what’s in my heart. And in any art we might pursue at whatever level we might be at, that’s what should matter–whether or not we choose to make ourselves vulnerable by sharing.

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