Writer’s Block

Yesterday, we interpreted a poem in German LK which really touched me. Not “touch me” in the way a poem touches you when it conveys a certain feeling, but, much more intensive, because the lines described and conveyed a feeling I know very well, a feeling only people who write can feel. I was stunned at first, amazed at second, and thoughtful at third. Our teacher told us that we’ll read it first, and that we don’t have to worry if we don’t understand anything about it, because that’s normal. I read it, and despite his saying so, I knew immediately what was going on in the poem, what was described there. I knew it immediately.

It was a poem Goethe wrote after Schiller had convinced him to continue “Faust; the poem that can be found at the beginning of “Faust”, called “Zueignung”. Just so that you might understand what I’m talking about, here you are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Zueignung
(aus: “Faust”)

Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten!
Die früh sich einst dem trüben Blick gezeigt.
Versuch ich wohl euch diesmal festzuhalten?
Fühl ich mein Herz noch jenem Wahn geneigt?
Ihr drängt euch zu! nun gut, so mögt ihr walten.
Wie ihr aus Dunst und Nebel um mich steigt:
Mein Busen fühlt sich jugendlich erschüttert
Vom Zauberhauch, der euren Zug umwittert

Ihr bringt mit euch die Bilder froher Tage,
Und manche liebe Schatten steigen auf;
Gleich einer alten halbverklungnen Sage,
Kommt erste Lieb und Freundschaft mit herauf;
Der Schmerz wird neu, es wiederholt die Klage
Des Lebens labyrinthisch irren Lauf,
Und nennt die Guten, die, um schöne Stunden
Vom Glück betäuscht, vor mir hinweggeschwunden.

Sie hören nicht die folgenden Gesänge,
Die Seelen, denen ich die ersten sang;
Zerstoben ach! der erste Widerklang.
Mein Lied ertönt der unbekannten Menge,
Ihr Beifall selbst macht meinem Herzen bang,
Und was sich sonst an meinem Lied erfreuet,
Wenn es noch lebt, irrt in der Welt zerstreuet.

Und mich ergreift ein längst entwöhntes Sehnen
Nach jenem stillen ernsten Geisterreich
Es schwebet nun in unbestimmten Tönen
Mein lispelnd Lied, der Aeolsharfe gleich;
Ein Schauer faßt mich, Träne folgt den Tränen;
Das strenge Herz, es fühlt sich mild und weich.
Was ich besitze, seh ich wie im Weiten,
Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten.

Our teacher told us it’s difficult to understand, but I knew immediately what Goethe was getting at, and I told him. He was totally confused and said we’re the first LK to interpret it that way so easily – that those figures Goethe addresses are the characters of “Faust”, the characters of the story he tried to write. Characters that are not clear to him yet. Characters he cannot quite grasp. And with the characters, memories connected with the story come back to him, too. Exactly this feeling – the same feeling Goethe describes in this poem, the feeling he must have felt back then – is the feeling of a writer. I know it very well, and I’m sure many others do, too.

If you don’t write, that must sound ridiculous to you. But at least with me, it’s like this:

Writing a story is, for me, a more or less passive process. If you are serious about it, you work out the way the characters behave and are beforehand, you work out a storyline, a plot, a world. But that’s not the process of writing, because – and that’s what probably sounds ridiculous to you – the characters do the story. It’s often like this, at least with me. No matter what I’ve planned beforehand, no matter how much effort I put into it, it always turns out to be different. Difficult. Relations between the characters, well-planned storylines? Forget about it. It’s no use when the characters start to evolve, when they start to develop and when they start to… get a story out of you. I’ve written for many years, and very often it is just like this – you are rather an instrument to write the story down. The true story, the one you get out of it afterwards, is more or less done by itself. In a way, the story writes itself, but I don’t. I only write it down.

I know it sounds weird. You do not have to understand it, either, because I guess it’s hard to understand when you’ve never written, never experienced that feeling.

The characters of a story (and therefore the whole story) are inside you. But writing is not a mere technical process. If you want to write something, and if you want to write something good, it’s no use if you have all the technical knowledge, but not the feeling. Sometimes it’s easy to get through to the characters, to bridge the gap between you and the characters inside of you, but sometimes, it’s impossible. Sometimes you can grasp the characters, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you can get a story out of them, sometimes you can’t. But if what’s inside of you and what you want to do don’t cooperate, you cannot do anything.

Crazy? It surely sounds like that. But it’s true. You cannot write without creativity, you cannot write without what’s deep inside of you.

I am very often surprised at what I write. You probably say that’s not possible, because you have to know what you write, otherwise you can’t write it, but that’s not true. The story develops while I am writing it. The characters react to each other, they change, and with that, they change the whole story. By reacting. And I, as the one who writes it, am surprised at all those little changes the story takes. For me, it is hard to stick to a plot, really stick to a plot. Because it always changes. It’s always different. The characters are always different. I often compare it with reading a book, or with watching a movie. You never know what’s going to happen, and you want to know how it ends, but you don’t know it until you’re finished. It’s the same when you are writing.

Yes, it does sound weird, but that’s the way it is with me. The worst feeling is when you have to leave your characters unfinished. When you leave the story unfinished, and its characters demand to keep writing, to finish it somehow.

Now, I’ve been writing for many years now. Since I was a child; since I first learned how to write. My years have been accompanied by characters; they’ve been with me all the time, they developed, and they changed a lot. And this changed me a lot. I know that I wouldn’t be the one I am now if I hadn’t been writing. I know I’d be a totally different person. I love to write.

 

I thought I would be able to write, now that there’s only one exam ahead (because my German teacher postponed our exam), now that holidays are ahead. Now that most of the stress is gone, now that I’m generally in a better mood, although I tend to be down from time to time.

But I’m not. I’m not able to write anything. I haven’t written a proper story – even a short story – for quite a long time. Of course, I’ve finished the story for Literature, but even that took me a lot of time, and it was actually not the way I normally write stories because I had a certain concept, I had a certain idea, I had a certain ending and it was some sort of experiment which, I guess, hasn’t been quite successful. But apart from that, nothing properly. I don’t get access to any characters any more. They won’t let me. It feels like being… empty, somehow. Very empty. Like a part that’s missing in my life currently.

Of course, I can write in RPGs, but that’s just not the same because only part of it is inside of you, and it’s very different. But I’d even write in the RPGs if someone let me. The thing in RPGs is that you cannot write whenever you want to. You depend one someone else and on his replies to what you’ve written.

Currently, I’m in, like, three “RPGs”. The one is the usual thing, on Mystic Zephyer Impact, where I am basically active with three characters (Auden, Azazel and Adara). But since I only RP with Bertina, and since she doesn’t reply any more at the moment, I cannot write anything there.

The second one is not a real RPG. It’s rather part of Mystic Zephyer Impact. Part of the background story of my character, Auden, which I write with my best friend at the moment. And since she’s involved in several other RPGs and therefore doesn’t get into her character anymore, I cannot write there, either.

The third one is a sort of fun story I write with a good friend of mine. Harry Potter stuff. You’re laughing? Well, we just did it for fun, we’re having a lot of fun, but currently I’m not quite able to reply there, because I cannot write any comedy right now.

RPing is very different from writing completely on your own. And it’s interesting because you – your characters – really have to react to someone else. It doesn’t come from you completely.

Anything I can write at the moment will do, I suppose, but I can’t. Either because people don’t reply to me in RPGs, or because I cannot do anything on my own.

I miss writing so much. Not writing anything leaves something empty inside of me, something that should be there and something that’s missing now. I want to write, I really do. I want to be creative. I want to produce something, even if it’s just crap. But I’m not even able to produce “crap” at the moment. Creativity seems to be gone, totally, and I don’t know where it went. I don’t know how to get through to my characters, how to make them do another story. Any character.

I’m just… empty.