When the Words Won't Come: Writers Block in Parenthood
My creative mind has been grasping at straws lately, nesting rather than creating. It’s ironic because my mind is doing this as I finally have the time to write after 6 months of happy insanity. The dreaded writer’s block may be rearing its ugly head.
I discovered the audio setting on Substack last week and went down a rabbit hole of listening to posts instead of reading them. I listened as I chopped onions, picked up almond milk, pulled up outside the sports dome to pick up the kiddo from soccer practice. I listened to
describe the narrative essay, and explain beginnings in her story challenge. I can do this, I thought, and then I went on to the next mind-numbing task I had to check off my list.Maybe I should play with audio?
I record myself reading the poem about the people dying on my phone, but when I play it back, my voice is all wrong, my pauses forced and stilted. Now I’m in my voice memo app, and I find a clip of my younger son, at three, having a meltdown because it’s midnight and he doesn’t want to sleep.
If you don’t sleep, what are you going to do? past me asks, in Arabic.
I’m going to cryyyyyyyy! he wails, his baby voice thick in that syrupy way of children who haven’t figured out how to move their mouths around the vowels yet. Don’t they always sound like there’s something else in there, sharing the space with the sounds they’re still learning to make?
Sleep when the baby sleeps, the saying goes. But what if your baby doesn’t sleep? What if your baby fights sleep like it’s the devil himself and continues to fight for four years, until your body and mind are shells, hollow from the inside, barely clinging to survival?