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Louise Gluck 3/11/21 To: Claire Meuschke
Writers block
I think this silkworm notion of diligence and productivity has done many writers real harm. They discover a style of speech or a subject and then just busily produce replicas The periods of blankness Nd silence are desolating. But tell yourself the well is filling up (it is). At the end of a bad period or a silence something will have shifted, your work changed. I believe this passionately. I think everything good in my own work I owe to endurance. You're a Taurus. You can do this
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to speak is human
one of the most defiant ways that we can assert our power—our not-duplicable, non-algorithmic, dangerous, and history-altering power—is to write.
yes you can feed your prompts into a generative AI chatGPT butthole and it will produce a precise and perfect and appropriate piece of text — but that isn't you!
it isn't you to have apple intelligence or google fartelligence rewrite your emails or text messages or essays or love letters
It is you to drag your pen across paper, or cursor blinking on screen—to discover, question, argue alone, to know yourself.
It is you to write what you shouldn't write—what you aren't allowed to say. To consider the impossible, the illegal or immoral, to wrestle with those things that others would censor or suppress.
It is you to yearn, love, grieve through writing: to gift yourself, and maybe others too, that record of your pain and beauty and dynamism.
Oct 5, 2024
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In university, I needed a really strict environmental setup to even think about starting an essay. I needed my water bottle, a good table in the library, enough sleep, and a full belly. The library had to be quiet, and in more extreme cases, I even brought earplugs.
Lately, during my lunch hour at my nine-to-five job, I've been using the time to write, often tucked away or sitting on the floor around the office. I tap away at whatever I can get down, to later return to and edit. I have to take these stolen moments. I'm too hazy in the morning to write, and too tired of looking at screens in the evening. Weekends are often sacred for friends and rest. I think, for many of us, the new habit of writing won’t be glorious, long-haul manic frenzies. It’ll be about taking sips here and there, getting down on the page whatever we can.
Sep 18, 2024
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i dont know if this will be helpful. Or confusing. But when i experience writers block i like to live with it (?) i think that its natural and you have to ride the wave. i think art comes to you. Not the other way around. Yes it is fun to create. but inspiration must naturally strike
I would get an ounce of an idea and i would push it and stress over completing it. And then get so frustrated And then its not fun anymore.
but now when i get an idea i transfer it to a physical medium and once i get stuck, i leave it alone. Until it comes back to me again. Or not at all. And that’s ok too. Not everything has to be completed
Keeping creative endeavors in the back of your mind can let them marinate and get nice and lovely. easier said than done but try not to get discouraged that you’re not writing right now. There is some kind of beauty in its absence
Feb 11, 2025
Top Recs from @vivi
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Like Bruce Springsteen
Jan 24, 2024
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When the bar or venue or whatever is underground and you have to descend into the place because you can say some shit like “We are entering the seedy underbelly of this wicked city” “You know,” *cig drag* “crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.”
And then your friends can be like “Viv, you can’t smoke inside Dude also where the fuck did you find a pipe and a fedora What are you even saying” Giving you the opportunity to respond with a
“Beat it toots, you’re too pretty for these streets anyhow”
Then you remember your friend already offered to pay for the Uber XL home and you have like 11 bucks so you drop the bit but the sentiment is still there below the surface
Jan 29, 2024