The author and his bottleneck

[The writer’s monologue]

▲Just like the tightened neck of a milk cup, which controls the flow and allows the contents to appear completely elegant, the bottleneck also allows the writer to humbly accept the limitations of reality, making the text more concave and convex.

bottleneck

The white porcelain milk cup resembles a bird, with a plump belly and a pointed beak. The white and soft neck implicitly plays the role of connection. Whenever the coffee is brewed, the heated soy milk slowly slides down like a waterfall. The aroma is fragrant. The thick black coffee is wrapped in the milk and looks like a beautiful young woman wearing a white shawl.

I bought the right milk cup! I usually use one thing for multiple purposes. I can use the same cup to drink water, tea, coffee, and instant noodles. This way I gain more cupboard space and avoid a lot of shopping troubles. But adding milk to coffee annoys me a little: ordinary cups are straight and you don’t pay attention to control the strength and speed. When pouring milk, it is easy to leave milk stains on the table, or to splash brown water when it collides with the coffee. After spending some time trying various ordinary cups at home without success, I decided to buy this graceful cup online.

At first I thought it was the sharp mouth, but gradually I discovered that the main culprit behind the scenes was the neck that tightened the belly of the cup to control the flow of milk, allowing the liquid to flow out completely elegantly and without any fuss.

When I looked in the mirror, I looked at my neck, and suddenly I was very grateful that it was not as wide as my shoulders, so I had to swallow the delicious food one bite at a time.

I started to pay attention to different necks and found that she also had shortcomings. For example, the elasticity of the esophageal muscles in elderly people is not good, and they may choke or become blocked if they eat accidentally. If some solid containers are not handled properly, the neck constriction will be clogged, and the contents will not be poured out.

When "bottleneck" is used in reality, it is not so beautiful and often has negative connotations.

Where I live, the highway is extremely congested during peak periods, but is smooth at other times. Due to changes in nearby urban conditions, some highway junctions have not kept up with the changes in traffic space, so there are traffic jams except in the early morning and late at night, even on weekends. People use the term "bottleneck" to describe annoying traffic jams.

People who are developing their careers encounter stagnant factors that cannot be overcome, which makes people anxious and tired. It is said that they have encountered a "career bottleneck."

The relationship between lovers is neither good nor bad, they lose their original passion, and they cannot step into the door of marriage commitment. This is also a bottleneck.

I can't help but sigh when I think of this - when it comes to writing, the pain caused by bottlenecks is the most annoying.

The bottleneck of text being unable to be exported

Difficulties caused by writing bottlenecks often cannot be solved quickly. Even the more you try to solve the problem, the more like pi, you will be more serious about writing the numbers after 3.14, and you will be trapped by the long string you drag out.

Stephen King, the best-selling author famous for his thrillers, has an amazing output. He writes at least two thousand words a day under discipline for many years. He emphasizes that writing means writing, writing, writing, and he has experienced writer's block for several months, almost unable to write.

Mark Twain, the great writer who once said, "Writing is actually very simple, just delete the wrong words." During his many years of writing career, he still couldn't avoid hitting a dead end and being unable to get out. It is said that he faced writer's block several times and actually hid the half-written manuscript for several months without even having the courage to take a look at it.

Writer's block happens to different people, and may have different conditions and processes. Some people's path becomes narrower and narrower, and finally they end up in a dead end; some people suddenly come to their door for no reason. Regarding the bottleneck, even if the cause can be found, it does not mean that there will be an exit immediately. For writing students, the bottleneck is a nightmare: they toss and turn but cannot wake up, want to shout but cannot make a sound, want to escape but cannot find an exit.

The bottleneck is not necessarily the inability to write anything. For some people, the inability to break through the current writing situation may also be a bottleneck. Just like the eternal book says, new wine must be put into new wineskins, and the author can be stimulated by new ideas every day and generate new inspirations. When I have not broken away from the old frame and my writing style is still at its original level. I want to write but my words cannot express the turbulence in my heart. This is a kind of spinning around before going up the ladder, and it is also a kind of writing bottleneck.

Some writers have written masterpieces, but when they want to reach higher levels, they get stuck in bottlenecks. Finally, they can't bear the insurmountable pain and give up writing. The peak has become the only height, and there will never be another wave of splendor and splendor; the masterpiece has become a masterpiece.

Another type of bottleneck is similar to a natural disaster. Thoughts of literature are like flowers. Yesterday they were in full bloom in the garden, but today they suddenly withered collectively. I have been preparing an article for a long time, I have searched for a lot of information, and I excitedly feel that everything is ready. When I closed the computer last night, I thought that there was a lot to write about, but today when I opened the computer, it was a mess, and I thought that there was nothing to write about. Suddenly, he was in dire straits.

Yan Geling, who regards writing as a civil servant and almost all of her novels have been made into movies, said that there are many times when creators want to hit a wall. Before writing each novel, she would carefully consider, research, and even personally experience it to make complete preparations. However, she still hit a bottleneck two or three times in the process of writing each book. In the long and narrow passage, she would think that the book was a failure from beginning to end and could not be written; she would cry to her husband and say that she regretted that she had chosen the wrong subject and had worked hard for a long time, but the book she had written was simply unfinishable. .

Graham Greene is known as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and wrote 25 novels in his lifetime. He stipulates that he can only write 500 words a day. Even if he is halfway through writing, he will stop and write one novel a year without stopping, five days a week. He admitted that he was a writer who insisted on "method" and "discipline", and even love was not allowed to break the rhythm of writing. He writes in the morning and says that if he wants to go on a date with his lover, it must be after lunch.

However, he has also experienced a winter when he could not write 500 words: the plot of the novel suddenly stopped developing, like a sudden death, and the new story was buried in the soil like a seed, but there was silence, like death with no green shoots. .

The bottleneck in the narrow valley of life

Just like mountaineering, sometimes the road is wide and easy to walk, and you can walk quickly, jump, and pick wild flowers while singing happily; sometimes it is rugged and difficult, and you can only climb slowly on the edge of the cliff. What you think about is not mountain climbing, but survival.

For Christians, just because writing has become a mission, they will not be able to fly over walls and fly over walls in real life without any hindrance.

▲The author was walking through the Valley of Life, unable to move quickly, so he could only keep his head down and crawl forward, following the light.

of course not. In reality, some difficulties are buried alive not only by the keyboard, but also by the author's ability to write. At certain stages of life, when you are traveling through a dark cave, it is difficult for words to soar like an eagle with wings spread. When walking on a narrow road, you must be willing to lower your head. Sometimes the hand must relax its fist in order to penetrate deeply into the bottle with a narrow mouth.

Don’t know what others are like? After living for half a century, I should be able to tell the truth for ordinary writers who are still struggling: some articles really cannot be written in the cracks of certain realities. So when life is not comfortable enough, we can allow ourselves to be uncomfortable writing.

The restriction of water flowing through a narrow bottleneck is the normal process of pouring out water. As long as you don't stop and continue to stay in that particularly slow stage, eventually the water will be completely poured out. What I am afraid of is that I am too impatient to wait for the narrow bottleneck, and end up spilling water all over the floor.

If the writing bottleneck is due to various restrictions in real life, don’t rush to break through it; sometimes shutting down may mean that the writer’s life needs to be upgraded.

Just as a man who does not know his own limits will never think that he needs an infinite God. When the author's reality encounters a bottleneck, it often reminds us: Who is filling the bottle with water? All the anxiety caused by writing bottlenecks makes us rethink what we think "relying on Him can achieve anything". What is the specific meaning of it?

Think about it, instead of being a literal wild horse, it would be better to be the colt that Jesus rides on.

Every time you are limited, it is an opportunity to re-examine yourself and measure your spiritual temperature. Writing is not the ultimate goal of a Christian author's life. When writing encounters a bottleneck, turning around is usually the beginning of increasing the size of one's life. I remember a pastor said: When a person is anxious about serving, he may have left the state of co-working with Him and is achieving his own goals on his own. Writing certainly requires discipline and diligence, but when trying to write something begins to become the driving force behind enslaved writing, anxiety freezes the creative heart and narrows the space for imagination to flow.

Lost the bottleneck of feeling

I also struggled with writer's block, like a bird trapped in a house. I could see the blue sky outside the window, but couldn't fly out. Every time I flapped my wings, I either hit the wall or the roof.

At that time, I always thought that reality had kidnapped me and I was just unable to escape. In order to be a responsible and conscientious person, I constantly receive the ball, from home to church, and from family to brothers and sisters. No one deliberately oppressed me, but I ran away from God’s will. I always ran ahead, turning back and saying to Him: Come! Come and lead me!

The busyness of life is really different from the busyness of life. The busyness of life can sometimes be uncontrollable, especially when accidents and illnesses occur uninvited, and you get stuck at such a high speed that you really can't escape. I surrendered: life is too busy, which is actually a kind of "letting go"; after letting life take the place of God as the master, "letting" life take over my life.

Gradually, I lost my sense of smell and lived with shortness of breath all day long.

The author loses his sense of smell, and life is just a stick. No matter how he smells, it always smells the same. At that time, my literary mind was dry and I lost the desire to create. I insisted on typing on the keyboard, but all I typed were small stones.

I quarreled with Him, telling Him that "there is a time to write and a time to live." I also told myself that living well when I couldn't write was also part of writing. (Yes, I told myself everything I told my students, just like taking screenshots from the Big Book of Truth to prove my argument.)

Then that day came, and I suddenly felt weak all over and wanted to take a nap, but when I was lying down, my heart beat so fast that I couldn't breathe. I could only sit half-pillow and half-sit on the bed with my eyes closed to rest. For two whole weeks, He took away all my strength. Except for forcing myself to get up and do some housework, I leaned on the bed, like a person in a movie who has an out-of-body experience, standing outside me, looking at myself who was constantly busy in the past reality.

It's like a lifetime ago.

I heard that smells go straight to the brain and leave memories there. No wonder, crazy and busy days often have no details in the memory, only a pack of plastic bags stuck there, tied with a knot. Busyness really makes people lose their sense of smell. If you can't smell it, even if you write it, it will be cliche.

After that, I felt grateful that my body had bottlenecks and I could limit myself so that I wouldn’t drain all the energy inside me all at once. It’s good to have writing bottlenecks. Let yourself get away and live a better life as a “person” first.

In the past two years, I have not stopped writing, but I feel like I have a bottleneck pinching myself. The taste buds on my tongue were captured and I lost my sense of taste.

I can never watch a movie to the end, I skip lines when reading novels, I feel a numb feeling of isolation under my emotions, and my senses are covered with stubborn calluses.

During the days when I lost my sense of taste, I continued to live and write based on my past experience and inertia. However, just like my sudden loss of appetite after my son became ill, I had to cope with eating in a mechanized manner. I ate, but I didn’t know how to taste it. I swallowed the food reluctantly just to live and fulfill my responsibilities. Many times, I can clearly feel the food being turned over reluctantly in my stomach.

Food is only used to sustain life and eventually loses its splendor; life without the author's taste finally loses its touch.

▲Only when the author dares to taste the various flavors of life can he not lose touch and the arteries of words can circulate.

While reading the Psalms, I ignored the poet’s heartfelt screams, protests, and howls before God. I just calmly entered and exited the inner prayer room every day.

I handed over the courage that an author should have in dealing with reality, and wrapped up his feelings in layers so that I would not feel so much pain, disappointment, and fear. But for an author who is too timid about feelings, the arteries of writing will naturally become rigid, blood will not flow through them, and they will become numb or even necrotic.

Until he was locked up in an anti-epidemic hotel, he slowly released his taste buds through movies and novels. I relearned not to actively control my emotions with my thoughts, but passively allowed myself to be led by the plot. I looked at my feelings and timidly probed my head, responded, and whispered: I taste it, I taste it.

Christian writers are more courageous than ordinary people to taste the flavors of reality. You can live without typing on the keyboard, but you can't use calluses to protect your heart.

Father! Please allow me to face reality bravely and taste it bravely. While I was praying like this, I heard a voice in the display room of the great man of faith saying:

"Therefore, do not lose your courage, for having such a heart will bring you a great reward. You must be patient, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised."

The water flows through the narrow neck drop by drop, pouring out so slowly, but it can accurately enter another cup.

If you are also in some kind of bottleneck, feel suffocated, or impatient, or even want to give up, don’t try hard to find a solution yet, and place yourself before Him today.

The bottleneck is the waist of the writer. Humbly accepting the limitations imposed by reality can make the text more beautiful.We do not write desperately; what we need to do desperately is to love passionately and obey the Lord who calls us, from the desk to reality, and from reality to the inner room. Seize every bottleneck moment, observe life quietly, and organize your life.

Ruixin, writer, whose articles have been scattered in newspapers and magazines. He was a columnist for "Cosmic Light" magazine and "True Love" family magazine, and is currently the author of "Beijing Foundation" magazine. At the same time, he has been running the "Private School Madam" blog, "Give me your sincerity" blog, "It's You" blog for many years, and has a Facebook page "Grab Happiness". He is the author of the books "The Footsteps of a Wanderer", "Managing the Family and Mind", and "The Wisdom of Discipline".