It's-a Me! The Blocky-Guy-Thing From Mario!

    The image you conjure of the blocky-guy-thing from the Mario Brothers Universe will depend on your age. I will go boldly forth into the realm of dating myself by showing you the blocky-guy-thing in my mind’s eye: 

No, your resolution is fine, that's what he looked like. Evidently his name is Thwomp.
(Image: Amino Nintendo Community)

    I am a writer, currently by passion, in practice by life-long dream. That dream is a long way from realization for various reasons - scrapping of would-be novels, young adulthood misspent on a quest for stories of Kerouac-esque proportions, a return to school in my mid-30's, and, most notably, writer's block.

    Writer's block looks like Thwomp. 

It's-a Me, Mario! You're never going to write that novel.
(Image: Evolution of Mario Getting Crushed by Thwomp, YouTube)

    There is a book that has been sitting on Package Mountain in my living room for months. It's called Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks. I had every lofty intention of opening it and letting the life-stifled creativity flow forth until spring semester 2022 started, but there it sits, still in its Amazon Prime packaging, just as stifled as the prose I put on hold again. 

    Honestly, I'm afraid to open it. I go to school full time, have a part-time grown-up job, and walk dogs as a part-time-not-so-grown-up side hustle. I don't have the time or energy to indulge in creativity outside of the creative parameters assigned in various coursework. I'm 37; energy does not abound like it once did.

    To quote this article from Simple Writing, "Maybe you just thought you could do it all. A half-hour to do this, a half-hour to do that, and a half-hour to write something." 

    I do think I can do it all. Writing is what gets the Thwomp.     However, there are moments. There are character notes scribbled in barely-filled journals, there are thoughts rambling about in the Notes app on my iPhone (a decidedly less creative-genuisy manifestation), there are projects I've done for classes of whose ingenuity I'm immensely proud. These moments come of very intentional head-clearing dog walks, my very own furry, often distracting, creative process.

    In The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp speaks of a friend who cleans when writers’ block sets in: “...it becomes an emotional challenge when you can’t corral the words into coherent thoughts. Suddenly you doubt yourself. As you wallow in self-doubt, you turn away from the computer screen and see dirt that you hadn’t noticed before…the dirt becomes inextricably linked with the self-doubt, and wiping away the grime cathartically wipes away the self-doubt. The emotional crisis is solved. Let the writing begin.” (Tharp, 2003,  pp. 15). 

    I don’t clean when I can’t write, as evidenced by my apartment that doubles as a doggy daycare. Suppose you replace that dirt with a little extra bit of tummy-squish that is so distracting it demands a brisk and lengthy walk. In that case, this becomes an excellent representation of my creative process, academia-induced as it may be at this juncture. Stepping away and clearing my head allows the ideas to flow, though they are sometimes interrupted by a dog who also has to flow. 

I weigh 28 pounds and I poop three times a day! 

    Tharp points to the importance of ritual, and one example given is that of Beethoven, who would start the day with a morning walk and jot his ideas down somewhere that wasn’t an iPhone (Tharp, 2003, pp. 13). Hey! I do that too! I’m just like Beethoven! Except Beethoven kept working after the walk and produced world-changing works of genius. Someday I’ll get you, Beethoven. Some. Day.

    There are five steps recommended in the aforementioned article from Simple Writing, and they echo Tharp’s thoughts on the importance of ritual and the work required to bring creativity to the forefront. Rather than list them all, I will underscore the importance of the first step:

If you’ve got too much going on, prioritize. 

    While I often remind myself that a lifelong dream does not come about by sitting around and telling everyone you’re going to do it someday, it would serve me well to put these steps into practice. I’m not getting any younger, I’m not going to get less tired, and knowing me, I’m not going to magically have more time someday. 

    After reading about Tharp’s box in chapter five of The Creative Habit, I bought a journal expressly for the purpose of “scratching,” to borrow haphazardly from the book - to condense the ideas I get from scratching in a multitude of forms, including reading, everyday conversation, and nature, to name a few also named by Tharp (pp. 39).

    The journal is still sitting on Package Mountain. 

    In a grand finale of mixed metaphors, it may be time to climb Package Mountain. I’m itchy, and Thwomp is getting too big for his blocky britches.