My August Brain is on Holiday

Is this writer’s block, I wonder? I’ve run dry. Nothing in the MTW tank.

As a bid for inspiration, I’ve taken myself off to a local coffee shop, ordered a flat white, and resisted the usual urge for cheesecake; it’s 9.35 a.m. and too early for anything sweet or cake-like.

My blog is due tomorrow, and as I usually post it at 6am, realistically, I have a few daylight hours to bring a rabbit out of the hat. With a trip to the barbers in 25 mins, a telephone call at 11, and an appointment at 7pm, time is not on my side. Concentration is not at its peak during the afternoon – so, Oh dear.

So, I’m freeforming, or, as it seems, freefalling and I might as well enjoy the descent into oblivion.

The view from up here is worth experiencing. I can see two books I’ve read, enjoyed, and reviewed recently https://www.unlessaseed.com/blog/a-two-books-review-the-spark-of-my-womb-b-coil-the-gift-of-being-yourself-david-g-benner Both deal with the search for wholeness from a state of brokenness. The first, a fiction, The Spark of My Womb is written by a Buddhist-influenced and psychedelic-using female author. The other, The Gift of Being Yourself, is written by a male author from a Christian-mystic-meditative perspective. If the first was wild and entertaining, the other was rich and informative.

And now I’m reading two novels: Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill and Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, the third in the award-winning Gilead and Home series.

Spufford’s Golden Hill is almost too good. Each sentence is a dive into the writing of a literary genius, his extraordinary knowledge of 18th Century New York, and the language and vocabulary spoken in that setting. The story is compelling, so I’ll keep reading, but it’s like indulging in an infinity of cheesecakes. Too rich for me.

Robinson’s Lila, set in Iowa in the 1950s, on the other hand, carries the same detailed knowledge of American vernacular, negro and white, but is somehow not so disastrous for the blood sugar or indigestion. I feel like I’m being carried pleasantly into a different world.

A question, though. As a writer, can I learn anything from these two authors? 

After two or three pages of Spufford, all I wanted to do was give up. If he is the equivalent of Tiger Woods, I am an ordinary hacker from a small-town Pitch and Putt. I’m in awe of his research and his grip on 18th century customs and vocabulary, and it is crushing. Robinson’s writing somehow has the opposite effect and renews in me a sense of joy in writing free from competition.

I’ve nearly landed. The ground is coming up fast. I’d love to add in some words from my morning walk through cider orchards caught in my thoughts about how the gorgeous red apples still on the trees must look down upon the fallen, rotting ones on the ground. 

I feel a poem coming on.

Perhaps the writer’s block is easing.   

You can find me at https://www.unlessaseed.com/ and probably track me down on FB: John Stevens