Searching around for a new slant on writer’s block to post on the Orkut community I manage, I found Writers First Aid
Critical childhood voices: those voices from the past that tell you you’re not good enough, you’re not creative, you’re untalented, or lazy. They might have originated with parents, grandparents, caretakers, teachers, or siblings. While you may no longer hear actual voices in your head, you’ve incorporated their views of you somewhere along the way, and they crop up at the worst times for your writing. The resulting feelings of anger and self-doubt produce confusion, sap your motivation, and make you wonder if you should just throw in the towel.
Then I skated into Lisa Collazo’s article “Writing Out the Gremlin” at the Creativity Portal. Gremlins are what she calls those inner critical voices that sometimes hold us back. Her solution is three-fold: identify, acknowledge and replace. That reminded me of an empowerment technique I learned years ago: we all arrive at adulthood with a mental “board of directors” to help us make decisions. The great part of being an adult is that you can fire anyone you please and appoint positive role models to your internal advisory panel. Determine who is holding you back and take action!
From: A Writer’s Edge blog where Georganna writes about writing.
Favorite 100 Bloggers
I like the twist on Gremlins. A few months ago I came up with a poem that brings out the same idea. Here is teh poem:
Long time ago in the land of blogauthorsphere,
There lived men and women who found pleasure in writing,
Theirs was a peaceful land until the ghosts and demons invaded it,
Thirteen thousand imaginary ghosts and demons!
They named the huge one Writer’s block,
If he had a father no one knew,
If he had relatives, no one knew,
Only that they feared him so much.
One day a fighter arose from their midst,
His name was Knowisdomagic - full of insight and power,
Knowisdomagic decided that enough was enough,
He dragged writer’s block to the bottom of the lake,
And they all lived happily ever-after in blogauthorsphere.