Sometimes I feel so trapped. And I don't really know a good way out. Right here. I'm I'm in a hole in the ground.
I'm surrounded by this circle of cinder blocks above my head. There's a mud pit here and no immediate way to
escape, and it's just nothing but a problem. And I need to figure out how I got here, why I'm here, how I'm going to
escape. So here I am. As you can see, cinder blocks all around and it's just a mud hole, a pit kinda like, uh, well,
that somebody threw me down like the King of Judah with Jeremiah thrown into a pit. And actually, now that I
think about it, that pit, that was a cistern that Jeremi was, was thrown into it. It was a vessel, a holding
place for water. Maybe that's what I should be thinking about, that this is not so much of a problem as a potential
solution. I gotta try to get out of here somehow. I'm just going to see if I can scale the wall. Get a toehold too I too
hard. There's a ladder. Thank you. That's great. Test. Okay. Well, from this perspective, up high above, not trapped
in the bottom. This looks to me like a cistern. It is a holding place for a valuable resource for water. And it makes
me think that this might be a good metaphor for what people go through with writer's block. They feel trapped. But
maybe within those confines, within that block is the solution. So just a little while ago, I was outside, trapped in a
hole in the ground, surrounded by cinder blocks. And I put on that show to suggest desperation. But the fact of the
matter is, as one takes a wide angle perspective on that whole, turns out that it
was a cistern, a well that holds a valuable resource, namely water that will be used to irrigate plants. So that's
really a metaphor, I think for what writer's block is. You might think that you're trapped, that you're paralyzed by
the inability to say anything, to write anything. But what could in fact be happening is you are generating a
resource. Think about a cistern as holding water. Your writer's block, your mind that feels so blocked right now
may very well just be, it might just be doing some good thinking, some ruminating, some, some experimentation
with ideas, assembling things, building things. So I don't think that you should be discouraged. That, oh, I've got
writer's block, there's no way to get out from underneath this. It really is not necessarily a malady. But at some
point it is true that you have to put pen to paper. So practically, how can we go about doing that? Well, very
practically, I think one way that a believing person, a believing writer can go about this, is to actually take the
concern to prayer. And in so doing, you're asking that God might help you develop pieces of writing for His
purposes, for His glory. And not so that you could be a best selling author, but simply so that you can convey
important information to the world. It may not be directly heart saving souls, saving information. It could be that
there are other stories, there are other poems that need to be written. It can be done so. And I think if, if a
person's heart is in the right place, that's a great step toward getting through writer's block. There are also
exercises that you certainly can do. And might I suggest that you consider the sister arts, painting, music, as
access points for your writing. Take these paintings on the wall, for example. These were authored by my
daughter, who just loves to imagine things and then paint them on these canvases. So what you can do as a writer
or a would-be writer to help you get through writer's block is to take paintings like this maybe by, you know,
famous, famous portraitists are famous artists and began to explore the paintings and critically evaluate them. And
tried to dive emotionally and imagistically into the paintings and begin to simply write down your reactions. So
much of breaking through writer's block is about, I'm mapping out ideas, taking notes, just playing around with the
language, using metaphor. The other thing that you can do, and this might seem a little quirky is okay, I'm, I'm
experiencing writer's block. It's lasting a long time. Think about some other people who have had
writer's block and have found a way out. Charles Schulz, the great comic strip, strip creator of peanuts. He, he
claimed that he had bad cases of writer's block. And he worked his way through by just doing sketches, scribbling,
even playing around with the idea of being blocked. So Charlie Brown is a perfect example of somebody who
seems to not be able to speak his mind a lot of the time. But we know through the strips that he's quite a thinker as
are you, as am I as a writer. And so when we think about Charlie Brown being described by Lucy as a blockhead,
imagine yourself actually with a blockhead and what that would feel like and what people would say to you as you
were walking down the street with a cinder block for ahead. And build on that idea, just dive into that imaginary
world. What would it be like to be trapped in a hole in the ground surrounded by
blocks? How would you get out? How did you end up there in the first place? So there are plenty of exercises
that you could do. So keep in mind that you are not alone as you feel that you are trapped in this, this, this block,
this paralysis. It is actually a part of writing that we all experience. And don't get uptight about it. Just think of
creative ways where you can exit from that. Like using art. Like I'm using music to stimulate thought and, and
move beyond that. So and also don't be afraid to reach out to your peers and to your professors. And keep a
journal. Always keep it active journal, always keep notes, take pictures, use your smart phone to take pictures
and then write about the scenes that you have captured. There's so many ways to get through writer's block. Yes, it
does involve not just sitting on your hands. It involves an active but reasonable approach to breaking through.
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