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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I got up and left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/em>, 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<\/em>? Or a stage adaption of The Old Crow Book Club<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-writing","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9701,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9698\/revisions\/9701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}