Curing a case of writer’s block

It’s a perennial problem that strikes at any time and place — writer’s block. It strikes without mercy but often when deadlines loom.

It’s happened to me this morning without warning. It didn’t care whether I was on the final page of a long book or a column like this one. It’s worse if you happen to be a writer or editor on a daily newspaper when the deadline is five minutes and you don’t even have the first paragraph written.

I thought I had the idea for an opinion piece about how people lie even when they know what they are saying is not true. But somehow, I couldn’t understand how they could tell such bald-faced lies without batting an eye. They seemed indifferent to facts or any truth. I suppose if they tell enough lies they even believe some.

You’d think I’d learned how to deal with such crises, but I guess I am a slow learner. I wrote two drafts of a column, then erased both. When in doubt, panic and force the work through. That only made it worse. And then I remembered some wisdom attributed to W.C Fields and a few others: “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

So, I quit and went downstairs to get a cup of tea. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the flowers in the small garden outside. I went outside and sat down. Sometimes it’s better to give up, which is what I did. I watched the small birds picking up seeds from the ground. I saw squirrels scampering after one another. And I let my mind rest on the flowers.

You can learn a great from a garden. If nothing else, you will be able to refrain from causing other people more problems. No wonder that Henry David Thoreau sitting near his Walden Pond cabin could write: “I wouldn’t walk around the block to see the world blow up.”

There is something humbling about planting a garden, especially for a city slicker like myself. You toss a few bulbs in before winter and, presto, without so much as lifting a shovel or rake, the green shoots come bursting out of the earth, which has been so barren and cold for so long.

Talk about the simple graces of life — nothing equals the sight of yellow and blue and red and orange sending their flares into the sunlight.

I also understand more why diversity is beautiful from studying my garden. The blue flowers do not say to the red, “Get out of here, this is our spot of the earth!” The orange does not seize the green buds by the stems and tries to toss them out of their space.

The beauty of a garden is that each flower retains its uniqueness, but when joined together with others forms a patchwork tapestry of joy. Stand back a few feet when your garden is in full bloom and observe its majesty, just as marvelous as seeing a photo of the blue planet earth from the distance of the moon.

There is an old proverb: “Many things grow in the garden that were never sowed there.” That’s the really humbling part of growing a life or a garden. No matter how carefully you plant the seeds, a few weeds always manage to grow. You can’t control them any more than you can control the people around you. And, sometimes, even weeds add a touch of diversity to a flower patch or a crack in the city sidewalk.

I’d been sitting quietly a half-hour now before I realize the column had written itself. All I needed to do was to give the words life.

I went upstairs to let the words flow. The writer’s block was gone and the column had written itself.

It’s amazing what you accomplish by giving up and paying attention to life.