Slurping on the Shoulders of Giants
To submit to Dislocate you must, of course, write. But what if
you find yourself creatively blocked? This is an age-old writer's
affliction and a blog post on its existence would be of little use to
anyone. But what are some tactics that writers use to escape the
dreaded block? Oh there are many exercises, prompts, visualization
techniques, sure, but one of history's least heralded is also its
most simple: coffee.
Take a man like Balzac. Fueled by innumerable cups of coffee, he
wrote novel after novel, often working fifteen hour days. In his
essay, "the pleasures and pains of coffee" Balzac noted that the warm
drink "gives us the capacity to engage a little longer in the exercise
of our intellects" and further, that under coffee's influence "ideas
quick march into motion like battallions of a grand army." The
father of realism was not the only one to depend on caffeine as a part
of his writing routine.
Jean Paul Sartre was said to ingest all sorts of amphetamines
during his writing days, but always needed a cup of coffee first. But
who else? There is a novel, "Coffee With Poe", based on the
historical fact of the great poet's love of the drink. And who can
forget the Beatniks, Kerouc, Ginsberg and company, perhaps the
literary movement most associated with coffee and responsible for the
rise and atmosphere of a good many coffeehouses. Remember, the next
time you take that sip of coffee before you sit down to write, you are
slurping on the shoulders of giants.