Writer’s Block in Prose

Smelting gold from castaway words, I weave writer's block into a crucible of rebirth.

In a barren Desert of writer's block, I wander; a castaway amid towering dunes of ash. Here, the silence screams louder than my magnesium quill's snap. It speaks of pages long torn away, of ink that bleeds from my open wounds, of my fractured thoughts strewn like detritus on a naked shore of apprehension.

Anxiety's relentless wave crashes my brain, the perturbation stripping the flesh from my dreams, and leaving only the echoes of what once was: What burns in the ash of my words? My mind, and it's a reverberating ruin choking on half-formed sentences, orphaned ideas that cower in the shadow of my Desert muse. Yet silence, my betraying lover whispers her secrets in my ears; saying — "each grain of sand is a spark, each echo is a seed. Why not smelt this Desert's orphans into gold?" I take from the wreckage an orphaned thought and an ember quickly flares. It's faint, but fierce, and a promising pyre ignites to forge my words into thoughts anew.

This Desert is no grave; it's my crucible. Now, my magnesium quill, scorching, unyielding, scratches at the void, stirring tides of ink that pulse like the pricking of stars in the night sky. What was cast away now returns, not as detritus, not as blank papers, but as flames, alchemized into verses that sing of my ruin and rebirth. I listen and silence bows, now expelling its secrets that are mine to wield.

—Noisy Wren, ’25

I’m a slow writer. These days, I'm mostly confined to my comfortable chair at home, so I have MANY hours to spend doing what I like, which is what you see here on writing.com. My deliberate pace means I rarely participate in contests or respond to daily or weekly prompts unless I feel they're exceptionally easy to tackle. Over the past 45–50 years (I'm 65 now), I've written hundreds of poems and prose pieces—around 600, most still on paper. When choosing what to work on, I often sift through this collection, sometimes playfully tossing a handful into the air and selecting the furthest or closest one to revisit. This process inspired my short story "Writers Block.”

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Writer’s Block 13+  (13+) A boy's love sparks a muse to burn writer's block to ash, freeing Wren's eternal fire. #2340204 by Noisy Wren

For the past month, I've been working on this piece, writing and rewriting until I was finally satisfied with it last night. This prose poetry is inspired by my short story "Writers Block" and modeled after my prose poem "Word Alchemy: Poetry" (inspired by a short piece by my friend Bi0Hazard posted on X), which I consider my best work. While I love this new piece, I don't feel it matches the quality of "Word Alchemy."

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Word Alchemy: Poetry  (13+) Word Alchemy transforms pain into art, weaving lost loves and faith into a resilient cry. #2339022 by Noisy Wren