Writer’s Block

When friends and acquaintances ask what I’ll be doing when I retire, I almost apologetically say, “Writing.” I then add, “And hiking, taking care of my husband with Alzheimer’s, and traveling between our two boys in Minnesota and Missouri. I say almost apologetically, because “writing” doesn’t seem to satisfy some people’s need for me to stay busy. I’ve even had a few to offer for me to volunteer in areas they have interest in. I’m not looking for things to fill my time. Writing can be a full-time job. Just because a short story takes five minutes to read, it doesn’t mean it takes five minutes to write. Writers agonize over their writing. It can ridiculously take hours to write, proof, delete, rewrite, and ponder that five-minute read. Then, there is the dreaded writer’s block.

Like all weeks, I try to conjure up a truthful slice of my life to write about. Every day for a week, I consider what will float to the top from the muck and mire of my brain. Yesterday was the first day of my spring break and I thought I’d get a headstart on writing my Saturday blog instead of procrastinating until late Friday night or struggling Saturday morning. But words wouldn’t come, no matter how hard I “willed” something to rise. I knew the writing well wasn’t dry, but only dead leaves would float to the surface. Or “Word-well drying up, dead leaves rising”. Six words expressing my current predicament: writer’s block.

After hours of worrying, wallowing, stressing, looking at old pictures and jewelry in hopes of magical inspiration for a long lost story, I gave up. I did laundry and decided to go into town to pick up Chinese. It didn’t take long. Before I reached the restaurant for curry chicken, a thought manifested. It was random and something I hadn’t thought about in years. When in junior high, my church had a white elephant sale. It was the first time I’d heard of a white elephant sale. I didn’t know what that meant. Heck, I still don’t know what it means or where the term came from, but we had a sale in the church basement with items people had donated. Much like a garage sale only not in a garage. Or a yard sale that isn’t in the yard. But white elephant? Come on.

My junior high friends and I were looking through church members’ discarded treasures, helping to place them on tables, putting prices on them. We then walked around to see if any of the items could soon be re-treasured by us. A pair of baby shoes caught my attention and I picked them up. I closely examined the white patent leather shoes with tiny straps going across the top of them. They looked brand new. I turned them over and turned cold. I felt the heebie-jeebies crawl all over me. One of the soles was worn and the other sole looked like it had never been on the floor. I was creeped out and immediately imagined scenarios explaining why. I wanted to leave the basement because it began closing in on me the second I turned the shoes over.

And that is sometimes how the writing process works. Bizarre moments jump out and a twisted mind can actually do something with it. Like seeing the connection between that pair of baby shoes and an assignment I gave my students one day this week. Six-Word Memoirs. Six-Word Memoirs is a thing. About fifteen years ago, a guy named Smith put a twist (no doubt a writer) on the six-word story and asked people to write a six-word memoir. Which means it is to be something significant (or not), about your life. Poignant or funny or universal truth maybe, but about you. He used a legend as his example: when asked to write a story of six words, Ernest Hemmingway was to have responded with “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn”. Smith probably made a fortune from his idea of turning a six-word story into a memoir. People have sent him six words enough times to collect them into a series of books. His idea could also be found under the screw top of Honest Truth teas. Brilliant! Since I don’t buy bottled tea, I don’t know if they are still found there. Commercial tea just doesn’t taste the same as Grandma Short’s southern boiled tea with tons of sugar in it, but I may buy one just to check it out. I don’t think I really have to walk you any further through the muck in my mind-well to see the convoluted way I write.

I can’t wait to see what my students present when they show their projects of thirty slides about themselves at the end of the year. There will be slides of their favorite things: friends, color, car, poetry, music, prom, hobbies, travel, animals; it covers it all. And there will be a slide with a picture and six small words in the foreground, holding hope, love, humor, dreams, as my students move forward in their journeys. My gift for each of them is to put under the guise of a grade, amazing slices of their lives into a tangible treasure they can always carry with them. A visual memoir.

Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash