“Life gets in the way.” That’s how a friend explained why she hasn’t been able to write lately. So what can we do when we’re marooned in a desert of uncreativity?

I’m writing this in the midst of my own desert, since I seem to be stuck in the longest dry spell I’ve ever had. I tell myself to just apply my bottom to the desk chair and sit there until my tardy muse arrives. An hour passes. Two. Nada.

Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting. After all, Nabokov wrote standing up – on index cards, no less. I try typing while standing;  the only result is an aching back. So I emulate Phillip Roth, who paced back and forth along with his flow of ideas.  At least I’m getting some exercise.

Edith Wharton did write while sitting up, but she was in bed. (She also had a maid pick up the pages tossed on the floor!)  Truman Capote was prone to writing while prone– a position which didn’t keep him from drinking at the same time.  So I tried getting into bed with a blank notebook  (sans alcohol)  and ended up with the pages still blank – but I had a good nap.

Of course it isn’t whether we’re horizontal or vertical that counts. It’s what’s going on inside us. All the clamor of should be doing this and why did I say that and how will I cope with the latest trauma coming down the road?   Instead I blame my stalled creativity on the outer clamor around me.  I live in New York and am constantly battered by neighbors talking loudly under my window, dogs locked up alone barking for hours, screeching car alarms that don’t turn off.  If only I had Proust’s famous soundproof room I’d be able to write, I tell myself. Yet when I have insomnia and instead of fighting it, take a therapist’s advice and head for the computer at three in the morning, in a house that’s as silent as a tomb,  I remain as blank as ever.  I miss the excuse of sound effects.

However, I’ve found a stopgap solution: my Three R’s: RESURRECTING  my “failure” stories I’d given up on; REREADING them with a view helped by the distance since I last worked on them; and REWRITING –  which means anything that will give the story a totally new feel.  Sometimes I go from third person to first, or vice versa. Or I change the tense, usually from past to present.  Maybe I make page two the starting point or end the story a paragraph earlier,  and find that cutting the excess verbiage transforms the entire piece.  It’s true I ‘m not writing a new story, but I’m bringing a discarded one to life.

The main thing with a so-called writer’s block is  not to succumb to the feeling that now equals forever.  By one means or another we do eventually make our way through,  and  often we’re surprised to find that we’re writing better than before.

P.S. Writing about not writing helps, too!