This image hit me hard because it felt so true.
There was a tree. That’s it, that’s what I’ve got. A vast emptiness followed that line.
In my head it was a hundred year old oak. Bark had cracked with lines that looked like an old sailor’s map from being outside too long, light coming through the leaves so the whole clearing looked like nymphs dancing underwater. I could see it all. It was beautiful. I could’ve told you the smell. On the page it just says there was a tree, which it never was, at all.
This happens more than I’d like to admit. Some days you sit down knowing exactly what you’re going to write, you are so ready because your head has been exploding with ideas and story lines. And then you get up an hour later and it’s four words and none of them are the right four. At least I got the language right. Trust me - it’s happened before.
I read an interview with Jason Isbell years ago (btw, one of my favorite musicians and storytellers), where he said he doesn’t really buy into writer’s block. Not because writing’s meant to be easy or come easy. He argued that the block was never about the words themselves, you still know how to hold a pen, it’s just that you’re not enjoying the work right that second the way you hoped you would, and your brain just isn’t in the mood to give you the good line for free. You might’ve felt like it until you sat down and had to do the hard craft. Brain just said ‘nah, thank you”.Fair enough, honestly.
So you write the tree. Badly. Four stupid words. But you do it on purpose, kind of, because there isn’t really another option. The tree is going to go anywhere if you don’t write it - badly or not.
It’s not a good sentence. It’s barely a sentence, it’s a stick figure holding a sign that says tree. But you don’t get to the oak and the dancing nymphs by waiting around for it to show up finished. You get the boring tree first. Then a slightly less boring one the next day. A little tweak. A touch of something new. Eventually, if you keep at it, you get the one that was in your head the whole time, bark and light and all. It’s why they call writing a hard craft. In crafting you building something - it never comes all assembled.
The bad sentence isn’t the failure part. It’s just holding the space open until the real one’s ready to sit down in it. Sometimes it comes easy but, more often than not, you have to put it together one piece at a time and it can take days if not weeks.
You know how long it took me to move He Walks With The Dead from a single opening chapter to a first draft? Just over two years… That chapter stood still for two years before the flood came.
So if all you’ve got today is ‘there was a tree’, write that down and move on with your day. The bark might turn up tomorrow. Give it a bit longer and maybe you get the light too. And show patience for the nymphs to start dancing.