Ruminations on My Writing

The other day I was sitting in my local Oregon Tavern Age joint, sipping an ale, a notebook and pen at hand, ready to write something. I sat for 30 minutes, finished my ale, and wrote nothing. This was a first for me 27 years of writing hundreds of thousands of words in OTA joints.

So I got up and left.

Should this alarm me? Is this a classic writer’s block, which I have never experienced for one second since I got the writing going in 1998.

Am I finally tapped out after a 28-year run of books, zines, poems, tales, articles, columns and blog posts? My books don’t sell that many copies anymore. They have all vanished from the bookstores except for a few used titles. This blog doesn’t generate any income. The Substack platform a tiny bit.

I continue to write about the crisis of homelessness but that subject seems on the verge of drying up, with no new subject on the horizon. I did start a novel about teaching in the 90s, and was initially energized with this project, but six months ago my interest died. I had an idea about writing a memoir based on my mix tape collection, but it has since withered. I recently published a novella called Teacher of the Year, but most of that was written in 2011/12. There are my poems written over the last three decades and I may put out a collection this year, but those poems are already written. I have another idea for a quirky book about driftwood forts, but it would be too expensive to produce. Every now and then a story emerges from Oregon Tavern Age country but that heyday is long gone. Donald Trump killed that scene forever. What about a film script for Rose City Heist? Or a stage adaption of The Old Crow Book Club?

I don’t know where I’m going with all this. Sometimes writing about a dilemma or concern enables me to work through the barriers and complications. But what reader wants to read about a writer not writing? Boring.

Many times over the years, I have told myself and others, that my impulse to write could vanish one day and I would have to move on and direct my creative energy elsewhere. I don’t feel like that day has arrived yet.