As with love, I believe that writing and the inspiration to write should be organic. It should bubble up from inside you with a spirit that won’t be stopped. Like an itch you can’t scratch or a laugh you can’t suppress, this inspiration can’t be ignored or bargained with.

So what happens when you, the writer, run headlong into a block. I’m not talking about the “I have tons of ideas, but when I sit down at the computer my mind goes blank” block. We all have those and we have found our own ways to over come them.

I’m talking about that wet blanked that dampens the writer’s labido and threaten’s to extinguish it altogether. When you don’t feel like writing and if ideas do come to you, they evaporate like slippery dreams.

Now if this was a romance, folks would say its dying, get out while you can before its totally dead. Men would have affairs, women would focus religiously on their kids to make up for what’s lost.
But, what happens when your love affair is with the written word? What then?

Have any of you run into this? What did you do to break its hold? Is there any breaking its hold? A friend of mine told me to “fall in love again” with anything or anyone. That’s hard for me. I don’t fall in love easily. I don’t even fall in like easily. Thats not to say that i dont find myself attracted to someone or something. I do. Its just that fir me most of these attractions are fleeting at best. They barely have time to register in my crowded mind when something else has pushed its way to the forefront. Its rare for me to instantly take to something. When I do, it’s powerful and lasting.

So how does one fall in love with anything, when its hard to fall in the first place? And, would being in love necessary bring back my writing mojo?

Maybe it’s not the specific emotion I need to focus on. Maybe I just need to get fired up about something. Whether that fire is caused by love, fear, anger, outrage, etc is irrelevant. Do they have online dating for “writing mojo”?

I need to shake things up, do something that scares me, feel that adrenaline rush. I’m aware that I may just be in a rut. But, it’s finding that break, that catalyst which moves me forward that’s tricky. I don’t know if that would be a new love, a year teaching abroad or a sabbatical of meditation and spiritual cleansing with the dali lama. What I do know is that I don’t write we’ll when it’s forced. So, begins my pursuit of mojo.