Let Go of the Bar

During a parent-teacher conference in my junior year of high school, my English teacher told my mom that I should “Let go of the bar.” This was the first teacher I ever truly admired, so I was very anxious to hear what he had to say. When I heard that I thought, What is he talking about?? I desperately wanted to understand his advice, but my 16-year-old brain simply couldn’t grasp it.

I never made sense of it that year or for the rest of my years as a student. It was after I became a professional writer that I started to get it. Years later, his words replay in my head on a regular basis.

We think writer’s block happens when we’re out of ideas or don’t know which words to use to express our ideas. While that certainly is the case for most writers some of the time, I think we also experience a truth block. As in, there is some kind of truth inside of us we don’t even know we’re avoiding, and sitting down to write forces us to dig for it. But either we’ve buried it so well we don’t know it’s there, or our subconscious mind just won’t let us go there.

So, we have to find a way to let go of the bar.

It’s so easy to play it safe in writing. Interesting wordplay can distract the reader from the fact that we’re not saying much. Doling out advice can make us seem like experts. Sharing a personal story can give the illusion of vulnerability. But what is that beautifully crafted sentence saying? Why is it that we know that advice, and what could we share about our own experience could be even more helpful to the reader? And what about the stories we’re not sharing – or how much have we’ve sanitized the ones we are sharing?

We don’t usually know we’re avoiding the truth that lies beneath the surface. That type of writer’s block starts with looking in the proverbial mirror, not the blank page. First, we have to see what it is we don’t want to see. Then, we have to be willing to put it down on a page for ourselves. If we can do that, then whether we share it with others or not doesn’t even matter. Any writing that comes after sharing a truth with ourselves will be infinitely better than the writing we try to do before that. There’s no reason we have to tell everyone everything — but we can’t say anything for real until we’re honest with ourselves first.

We all have to let go of the bar. Over and over and over again. It’s the daily practice of writing. It never gets easier. In fact, I would argue that it almost gets harder over time. Because the more experience we gain writing, or the more we exercise that muscle, the easier it is to get words on the page that look pretty good. And then we might not even realize that we’re just skating the surface.

Here’s how this played out for me today. I’m reading a book called Journal Like a Stoic by Brittany Polat and writing from its daily prompts. Today’s prompt talked about the idea of courage and called the reader to think about when they’ve shown courage in their lives.

Immediately I thought, I have nothing to say about this. I love the idea of courage, especially quiet courage (which they go into in the prompt), but I told myself that I’ve never shown courage. Then I started to think about times that I might have to show courage in the future, then I proceeded to procrastinate on the internet for a half hour instead of writing.

When I came back to the prompt, I told myself to just skip to the next day. Clearly this prompt isn’t for me right now, I thought. I might as well stop wasting time and go to the next one so I can get some writing done today. Then I procrastinated some more.

Finally, I went back to the prompt and started writing the only thing I could see for sure in that moment: I don’t believe that I’ve shown much courage yet in my life. And the very idea of talking about courage (ironically) made me feel fear. That’s when I realized what I didn’t want to admit, much less write: I believe that I’m a fearful person. Then: I know I have to be mindful on a daily basis to ensure that fear doesn’t drive all of my decisions.

I could feel the resistance rise up in me as I wrote my thoughts on this. The closer I got to that last sentence above (the one that was the ultimate truth of the moment), the more I wanted to stop writing, to walk away, to argue that what I was thinking wasn’t entirely true. But what is truth, anyway? We’re all operating from our own perspectives. And my perspective is that I grew up in a society that glorifies a certain type of bravery, and I don’t think I have it. And that makes me feel unworthy. And even the thought of facing that makes me feel like I have to do something about that and that makes me feel fearful again and so on and so on. 

Once I got writing, it didn’t take me long to see the conclusion of my thoughts, but it was painstaking to get myself to face the conclusion as I was coming to it. I don’t want this to be true, so naturally I don’t want to put it in writing, even if it’s just for my own eyes. But it is true, and I can’t write anything at all if I can’t at the very least start with the truth. And the fact that I’m sharing it with you now doesn’t mean anything – that’s a personal choice that writers make on a daily basis. I’m only sharing it because it led me to this reflection, otherwise it would be good enough that I simply sat down and wrote it.

The hardest part of all this, I think, is that we just don’t know when the block is coming from a subconscious knowledge that doesn’t want to be found. If we did, then we could step into the ring whenever we want and mentally prepare ourselves for the challenge. But our rational brains are smarter than that. Mine told me that I just don’t have anything to say on the topic. I only got to this point because I kept coming back to it to see if there might be something there. In the end, that’s all we can do. Before we fully walk away from a topic, poke it with a stick a few more times. Really challenge ourselves to see what might be there, just under the surface. What’s next is entirely up to us – but we’ll never get anywhere unless we let go of that bar.