And Now For Something Completely Different

We interrupt this campaign season to take a quick breath...

Issue #749 The Choice, Thursday, October 17, 2024

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 My creative writing teacher in college once told the class that there was no such thing as writer’s block. He said whenever you encountered that crippling creative experience that you mistakenly believed might be writer’s block, the only thing you could do to heal yourself was to start writing.

Overall, I’d say that was excellent advice from Professor James Yaffe, the best teacher I ever had, hands-down. And sure enough, just like he said, whenever I felt stuck and started writing to bypass the blockage, the film would start rolling inside my head, and the stories flowed—almost like magic.

So, with all due apologies to Professor Yaffe, who has long since moved on to that great writer’s retreat in the sky, I ran face-first into a writer’s block yesterday that I simply could not find my way around or write my way through. Maybe if I had been working on one of my beloved science fiction stories, I could have imagined a bridge to carry me to the other side of my idea, but this wasn’t supposed to be fiction. The time had come to write my weekly The Choice post, which in recent months – and for obvious reasons – have all been focused in one way or another on the upcoming election in November. Because it’s the most important election of my lifetime and one of the most important in American history, and my words are the best things I have to give to this fight. We all have an obligation to give our best, and I don’t do anything better than I do words.

But what does a wordsmith do when the well runs dry and no clouds are in sight?

That’s the question I asked my wife last night, visibly exhausted, as I had wracked my politically shell-shocked brain all day trying to think of something I hadn’t said yet or that I hadn’t seen someone else say better. A different way to say it, perhaps, or from a new angle maybe? How about if I…? No, that wouldn’t work. Hey, here’s an…no.

“Why don’t you write about the change in seasons?” she suggested.

Say what?

“Something completely different. Just write about the seasons.”

I smiled.

“A complete break.”

“Yes. A complete break.”

I could feel the good air flushing back into my lungs as I took a deep breath and exhaled, feeling the tension release its claws. I wondered if that was the feeling Joyce Vance, author of the brilliant Substack Civil Discourse, got whenever she took a well-deserved pause and wrote about her chickens. Or when Professor Heather Cox Richardson, author of the equally brilliant Substack Letters From an American,  interrupts her flow of historical essays to display a sunset photo over a lake. Because this election season can make your heart race all through the day and your dreams like a maniacal marathon runner chasing mirages of water through the desert if you let it.

So sometimes, you need to step away and watch the leaves as they turn colors and fall, float, and drift. One thing I have always loved most about Michigan is watching the leaves turn, even though I know what’s coming when the trees are naked once again. Even though I know it means figuring out which day is the single best day to do the raking because I do not rake leaves more than one day a year. I’m one and done. Not gonna do that twice. Whatever stubborn leaves persist in clinging to the branch after that day? I salute them. Congratulations. You dodged the leaf bag. Well done.

But before that day comes, there is also that day – usually more than one – when the weather warms up just enough for me to sit out on our large front porch (one of the best features of the house and a big reason why we bought it) and just sit in near silence, thankful we live in a neighborhood where that’s possible as I soak in all the fall colors, sounds, and smells.

Tomorrow always comes. Enjoy today.

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