Jason Mark Roehrig My Web Home

I've never understood the complaint about "fear of the white piece of paper", and have been suspicious about "writers block". To me it always seemed to be rather a question of motivation and discipline, as a result of reflecting upon my own [non-]activities. The only state of mind I have come across, where one is really stuck, is a clinical depression (note the difference to the colloquial stated form of "depression").

Take for example painting. If I really want to draw or paint something, but nothing seems to "come up", and the illusion of "blockage" appears, I've come up with the following strategies to get going. One is to just start drawing a couple of lines, and get inspiration from what then emerges in my mind. The other is to start smearing colours I feel comfortable with on a separate sheet of paper/canvas, or what ever material I'm working with.

A similar process I use when sculpting. I gather possible materials to use. Place them in different positions, or hack around upon them. With time the work I want to create emerges from the depths of my mind. This is what one calls creativity after all. Having said that, never believe in that voice in your head, which is suggesting to you, that you have no talent or insufficient creativity. These are not gifts, as often suggested through popular belief, but features of being human. You are provided with them by birth. It is only up to you, if you harness and use these functions provided by nature, training them with every instance of usage, or if you decide to allow them to lay dormant and wither into obscurity of your personality.

I once attended an exhibition of Henry Moore titled "Ursprung Und Vollendung" (Origin And Completion) in the Kunsthalle Mannheim. I still have the exhibition catalogue, which my generous mother purchased for me. What has stuck in my mind since then, was Moore's statement about the materials intrinsic property, of having the final sculpture already in it. I was fascinated by that view, but couldn't rid myself of the "bitter aftertaste" it left me with - an impression of esoteric New Age belief. What I completely ignored back then, was the triviality of the statement, which now convinces me of it just being a blurb for the "arti-farty-crowd". It is true, every piece of material you want to craft, already contains any possible object you want to create within it. It all depends on the artists to free the object, in the sense of creating it. In other words, the origin and the completion lay with the creator, the artist, you, using and transforming the material which already exists.

Sorry for that little tangent, back to the main subject of this article.

When it comes to writing, it isn't much different in my experience. Here it depends if I already have an idea what I want to write about, or if I need an idea what to write about. When I have a topic in mind, but don't know how to write about it, I will start drawing a mind map or some form of diagram. This allows for a visualization of the subject interested in, providing sufficient inspiration for the text to write. Leading to a pre-stage of the just mentioned technique, if ones creativity is a little sluggish - keyword lists.

Keywords are triggers to the mind, which can set of cascades of associations. If you're not sure at the instance of notation, how and which relationships between the keywords exists, just note them down in a single list, and review this list once your mind comes to a halt. If you find multiple relationships, you can start transferring the list into a diagram, or just create another list, and another, until you feel confident to start outlining your intentions, or can just start writing.

So, if you have absolutely no clue what to write about, just write down the words that firsts come to mind. Use multiple sheets of paper, and use them as separate sources of inspiration, and switch as soon as a halt seems looming. Always keep starting of an a new piece of paper, if the already created doesn't seem to help you any further.

Yesterday I was once again reminded of the importance of persistence. Every word, every sentence that I was able to write, sickened me. Nothing seemed right. Nothing seemed to flow. But I prevailed. I continued to write, delete what I had just written and found myself disgusted by. Until in the end, I got something that I was satisfied with. Certainly, it took me four hours to just write a simple text providing some basic information, but I reached my goal, and that's all that counts.

Hence my doubts mentioned in the introduction of this post. Motivation and discipline are the parents of persistence. Hence the title of this post, if you want to have something written, or any other form of art created, persistence is the key to succeed in reaching your goal of creating.