Let’s Change Up the Meaning of Writer’s Block into Input Time

Time to get out of our own ways for the words to come through!

Okay, so you think the idea gallery has gone off to play with someone else. You’re frustrated they aren’t listening. The streetlights have come on. Words come back home now! It’s been days and days, where have they gone? ::Shaking fist in the air, grabbing the megaphone:: Why, words, why!?

Here’s my thinking out loud in squiggly symbols.

Writers block isn’t you not being able to bring the words home. They’re already home, they’re just waiting for the right time to say,

“Hey, yo, oh, eh, I’m here!”

The ideas, like you, need some chill time. For the love of the muses, let’s change up our mindset, and stop getting in the way of our words. You’ve got far too important ideas to share, for you to be getting in your own way, creative.

I’m convinced writers will change the world.

“Writer’s block” is so 1924.

It’s 2024, baby, now it is our time, our time for what I call input time, my friend.

We’ve got to change the way we look at when and how we write. So our words can come through us and be. When our shared words can become an interconnected moment with another in some place and time beyond us.

Throw away the words: writer’s block! (Along with anything else that is getting in the way of your being, creative.)

Input time is where you can just interbe with all the life, fun, creativity and beauty around you. You are not worrying about the words, and where they are now. They’re there, don’t fret. You are focusing on the space and grace to gather the ideas!

It’s the time to become the moment. Reflect and observe as a creative being. To be living life. Then to live these ideas through, into your now of words. And believe me, the ideas are everywhere — once you get out of your own way.

We think churning out words is productive. Sure, maybe? Yet, why must we be productive, when we can just be, and then write with zest and passion and life?

Who is telling you when and where and why you must write? It’s only you with these words. That’s a bar you have set for yourself. And you can always adjust that bar at any time! And frankly, half the time the bar is set by someone else.

Now is the year you set your own way.

This is the year for your way, with your intentions, no one else. Just you and the words, in the imperfect process.

I know it seems simply simple, because it is.

Calling yourself blocked will inevitably lead to you being blocked. Unless you enjoy that kind of feeling, please continue.

But let’s be radically honest. Do you even want to read your words that have no heart, or passion behind them? Words that were not birthed in fire, or ash, or flowing water, or handmade clay or mud?

You can feel it in the letters.

“No mud, no lotus,” Thich Nhat Hahn says.

No life being lived fully in the moment, it’ll be a challenge to find the words again — unless you have a wickedly, extraordinary imagination.

But think, allowing all the wonders to come into your being, in the input time, plus your gifts of imagination and play? That’s when words beg to be written. They burst into existence! That’s when the muses bug you in the shower, or the middle of dreaming.

When you have had the time to take life in, in order to give life back out.

Input time.

But seriously, Muses, let me shower and sleep sometimes too! Jeesh. But I am grateful for them. So grateful for my input time, so grateful for the muses, and inspiration here, gifts everyday from you!

Then we can get to the rad output time, when our hearts are so full we must write.

As creatives, we must create. It’s like breathing. So why block yourself from the beauty in the thinking you are damed up? Why hold your breathe in frustration? Go out and enjoy fucking life. Wait, that word order isn’t quite right.

Well, maybe it is.

You’re not damed. You’re just in receiving mode of all the joys and pains and thinking time, in preparation of the creation of your words.

You’re thinking about what life means to you, asking those deep questions to roll around in your mind. You’re conversing with people you love. You’re reading and applying words and thoughts and feelings for your future self. When you are ready, that moment when you are blessed with that must moment where you’ve just got to write.

You’re giving yourself the space to be during this input time.

Now, when that output time comes to you, be in the very moment, keep moving those words to the right. No looking back, no overthinking, no wondering if he, she, them, or the aliens reading will enjoy your clever wordplay. Question is: are you enjoying the process? If not, go do something you enjoy until that moment where you feel you must write again.

I know you know that must moment.

Drafts are for letting all that time you’ve spent enjoying life free! Don’t trip yourself up by getting in your own way. Let the words live just as they are in this draft writing. This is when the words are meant to be on the page, just for this moment.

You can go back and read them aloud to yourself too, when the first draft is completed, and see how this you is receiving them now. You can hear the flow from your own lips into the air of this moment to your ears. Then join in the dance of the words, and how you can now move together in this life.

Editing is for polishing that beauty, also in joy. I cannot tell you how much I love the detail part of final drafting. I will go over a draft for days just in the pure enjoyment of it. It’s like when I create art and get to the fine line part.

When you really are in joy, in the action of writing a draft or polishing that masterpiece of yours, we feel it. We feel the joy, we feel the emotions in your words.

The intention of your action lives in your creation.

Some people may be able to bang out words for content. But don’t we now have AI to do that? And we know there’s no heart in that either.

Be present during your input time. And especially during your output time. When I say be present, I mean, put all of your attention into that one word, into that one letter. In becoming the moment in writing, your heart is infused right there in your words. Words that were just existing in your being waiting for you to live and enjoy and be. Gathering up all that passion in wait for your collaboration.

No need to be hard on yourself for not creating masterpieces just yet, you’re just living your life for those masterpieces to come for your future self.

Being now is more than enough, the gift for your words of the future.

It’s about trusting the process. Trusting the words will come through you, exactly when they’re meant to. And they will be found by the hearts to see it, after you’ve polished and enjoyed — exactly when they’re meant to.

Follow your own writing formula, please. Even if this doesn’t seem to work for you, and you love the idea of being blocked, writer. Stick with that. I mean, I’m no expert. Just Jenny Lane over here, a human being who loves language, loves words beyond belief, loves thinking and sharing ideas. And really loves being a writer.

So you do you, please. Be you in your words, exactly who you are, right now, in the writing process.

There is no other part of the Universe being the Universe like you, to hide that, or to conform to someone else’s way, means we are missing out on one radical expression of the Universe.

Let us share in your view!

You are this fingerprint of the Universe, show us your uniqueness in words.

Do it when, and how writing works for you, at what space time it works for you.

Remember, if you’re trying to fit into someone else’s box, on someone else’s time, your words will be clawing out of it, to get back to you.

Let’s change our mindset from writer’s block to owning our — now, this is my input time. And be grateful during this compassionate space-time to be. We need this so much, as do our words.

The space-time where we have this glorious life to live, and the skills to express our wholly unique being during our input time, with the awesomeness of being writers.

Trust the words will be. As long as you are trusting in the process of interbeing, living and enjoying this life in all its glory (and also the not so glorious parts too — they are all happenings to experience). Be until the moment the words are ready to live in existence on the page. Right when they’re meant to be with you!

What a miracle!

Now go out and play with yourself, give yourself the permission to just be. And then the words will say, “Hey yo, oh eh, I’m here, thank you for being! Let’s do this!”

Just be ready to listen when they are. And then go write your heart out, beautiful human. We will be here to read them.

With radical love, Jenny Lane

🌈💜

~namaste~

“[Creatives] live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment’s happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment.

Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above their personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own.”

~Herman Hesse