Once upon a time, I didn’t believe in writer’s block. I’ve known writers who have claimed, with some validity, that they struggle with the affliction from time to time.
They just can’t get the words out and put them on paper. But the idea (I’m not about to call it an excuse) didn’t hold water with me.
Maybe it was the years I spent in newspaper work at the start of my career. Having to crank out stories every day on deadline … or be shown the door … can drum the luxury of writer’s block right out of you.
I believed that anyone can write when they have to … like when you have a scowling editor standing over you with an extended, “gimme that story now” hand.
But this week is different.
I’m retired. I don’t have to write anything.
I write because I enjoy it.
Nevertheless, in light of the war reports that have bombarded us this week, the thrill is gone somehow.
At least the thrill of writing about Ted’s and my recent travel experience in Scandinavia.
I just can’t post happy photos of hauling huge king crabs from a deep-water trap. Sweet photos of the sled dog puppies we cuddled. Enticing photos of some of our fabulous meals.
Not today.
What seems more appropriate is to post a photo of a painting my mom created 55 years ago.
The year was 1968. The painting was part of a program at our Presbyterian church as the denomination struggled with the question of how to make the church relevant in troubled times.
It’s a collage, actually, combined with acrylic paint. I think my mom called it “mixed media.” The centerpiece is a clipping from the Buffalo News, the daily paper in the city where my family lived at the end of World War II.
The headline joyfully proclaimed that day in August 1945: “PEACE: Our Bomb Clinched It.”
Our nation had just destroyed Hiroshima.
At the top of the collage are pieces of the cover of the Life magazine edition that commemorated President John F. Kennedy. His 1963 assassination was still a fresh wound in our hearts when Mom created this work in 1968.
She wanted to preserve that pain. The death of a president. The horror of war.
And create, along with it, a sort of Everyman figure in a pose of despair. Or maybe prayer.
Some years ago, I gave the collage to our nephew Chris and his family in Charlotte, NC, as we downsized for our move to Atlanta.
But, not surprisingly, its image has been in my thoughts all week.
So I asked Chris to send a photo of it, which he graciously did.
“Mom’s Peace painting,” as we call it, is still relevant today, I’d say.
Maybe more relevant than ever.
I hope to get back to the standard blog posts soon. More travel reports. More good news about book events we’re attending. More about the otherworldly experience of hearing my sentences in the voice of my book’s Audible narrator, as he sends me chapter after chapter to review and critique.
But for now … the only words filtering through my writer’s block are these:
Pray. For. Peace.
Mike Coleman 