Facing Writers Block

against all odds...

A Little Encouragement for Blocked Writers

We wanted to share a little encouragement with you from the author of Beyond the Glass. What better way than to simply print the prelude—which addresses the topic of writers block head on?

Check it out…

The Prelude from Beyond the Glass

This year, for National Poetry Month, The Write to Poetry offered a 30-Day Challenge—thirty prompts to take us back and send us forward.

I decided to write to all thirty, regardless of how inspired I felt regarding any given prompt. (If you’d like to try the challenge yourself, you can find all thirty prompts at the end of this collection.)

Ordinarily, I’m not the kind of poet who writes to prompts. My poems tend to come from real-time experience, through the sudden, colliding juxtaposition of an image and an emotion, as if they were meant to be together. How could I refuse to give them partnership in a poem?

Yet, for the past seven years, I had fewer and fewer of these poem-writing experiences. In fact, I developed a very sound case of writer’s block. This was startling! I’ve always been an extraordinarily prolific writer. Then, the writing evaporated. What an empty landscape it has been.

There are logical reasons for this, I am sure. Things to do with cognitive and emotional overload, coupled with not enough time to simply unwind. Distractions, too, and a sense of not knowing when a host of challenges would end (if ever).

It was in this discouraging context that I decided to try something entirely (for me) new: to write to prompts for an extended period. I would push myself to pen poems even when I felt nothing—or, worse, when I felt exhausted and disinterested.

What resulted is a collection that has a certain voice and vision. A kind of looking forward and looking back, just as the prompts promised to give us. I hope you enjoy these hard-won poems. They are my gift to you for moments when you think you cannot go on. You can. Against all odds, you can.

—L.L. Barkat

Plus a Bonus Poem from the Collection

Sparrow Beyond the Glass

There you are, all wings and flitting—unthinking of your untold tomorrow;
You play amidst cherry blossoms, unworried; more sweetness will unfold tomorrow.

How lightly you take flight, leave the blossoms touched with a blue-bold sky;
Tiny buds wait for your wings to return at sunset, the gold of tomorrow.

There are some who would like your home to be sold for a song;
But where would you play, then, as the earth unrolled tomorrow?

The drum of morning beats ‘til the hour is annulled;
Perhaps you will bring back a mate to remold tomorrow.

Inside, I stand by the glass, shake into a cherry sweater, now old
Ask you, as if you could know: will it still be this cold tomorrow?

How About You?

We invite you to tell us if you’ve ever suffered from writers block—and what you did about it.

Or, if you are currently feeling blocked, ask us a question (or just share about your dilemma!).

L.L. Barkat is the author of twelve books, including The Novelist: A Novella; Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing (twice named a Best Book of 2011); and Love, Etc. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems, Best American Poetry, VQR, NPR, and the BBC.

Book photos by L.L. Barkat. Used with permission.