In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche identifies two major figures from which during the creation of art (and life) we vacillate between. On the one hand we have Apollo; god of music, dance, truth and prophecy he is widely regarded as the rational, ordered form giver to life and art. On the other hand we have Dionysus; God of wine, festivity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy and the theatre; a disordered, irrational, undifferentiated kind of spirit. 

As writers we must invoke both if we are to create a story that inspires, engages, surprises and doesn’t sink like a leaky boat. 

But for those writers looking to cure themselves from the crippling disease of writer’s block, we’re gonna leave Apollo on the shelf for the time being. 

Look, there’s plenty of time to learn structure, plot, dramatic action and character and all that other good stuff that comprises a story but sometimes, when writing, we can feel overwhelmed, weighed down by all the tools we have to carry along the way. If you’re tying yourself in knots trying to extricate yourself out of a tricky plot hole, maybe you’re holding too closely to the Apollonian view of the world? The rational, controlling mind can sometimes stop us from allowing us to see what is trying to be written through us and that’s where Dionysus comes in. 

Often when mentoring writers, a young writer will say to me, ‘I don’t know what to write.’ To this my answer is, ‘that’s okay, you don’t have to know, can you write one word?’ They might roll their eyes and say, ‘yeah.’ ‘Well just write one and then another, they don’t even have to make sense, maybe it’s just a list of nonsensical words.’

Here’s an example; roughness, languid, special, carcrash, convivial, lollygagging. 

Okay, so what? They’re just words and I’m trying to write War and Peace over here, an epic about the innate problems of our milieu and you’re just writing random words? What the helly?

Good point. Let’s give these words some context. 

The ROUGHNESS of the builders hands were always cause for concern when they were in the company of the social elite. The builder looked around at the LANGUID socialites, lazing on the lawn by the plunge pool. He thought them part of a SPECIAL class, an immutable class, a level of refined human civility he would never attain and he could feel this in the roughness of his hands. This cold reality of class came hurtling towards like a CARCRASH, the whiplash shocking him back to reality. He saw the CONVIVIAL genteel sunworshippers, LOLLYGAGGING by the pool and turned his back on them, leaving in disgust. 

So at the beginning of this I didn’t know I was going to write about a disgruntled labourer reconciling their position in the world but I wrote it. 

Sometimes, it’s not about what you want to write but what wants to be written through you. 

There’s a deep well, an infinite pond of ideas, thoughts, stories, all swimming around within us and without and often all we have to do is loosen the reigns, get our Apollonian brain out of the way long enough that the primordial stew can bubble up into something onto the page. 

Sure, eventually if you want to structure something to make a reader feel certain ways at certain times, we’ve got to learn all those things I mentioned earlier like dramatic action and structure; the tools of the trade, but if you’re stuck, give yourself permission to throw all that aside and just write. 

N.B – The thrust of these thoughts around writing were handed down to me from the wonderful playwright and theatremaker Sibyl Kempson who I have had the good fortune of being mentored by. It feels only appropriate to pass them along to those I now have the privilege to mentor. 

Lachlan Bray