Some Days the Words Won't Come - and That's Okay

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Lately, I’ve been caught in a writing slump.

Not writer’s block exactly—more like a heavy silence.  I'm trying not to force anything. Forcing it only makes the silence more stubborn.

I know this will pass. It always does.
But when you're someone who uses writing to process the weight of the world, silence feels heavy. I’ve been trying to lean into stillness instead of panicking. To let the poems come when they’re ready, even if that means staring at blank pages for a while.

To stay connected with the creative part of me, I’ve been revisiting past poems—some I’ve nearly forgotten writing. This week, I reread “Lost Humanity,” a piece I published in April, and it felt especially relevant.

Poem Spotlight: “Lost Humanity”
Read it here: Lost Humanity – Broken Echoes

This poem reads like a dispatch from the edge of civilization; post-apocalyptic in setting, but emotionally rooted in something very human: grief.

It opens abruptly:

“All there is now is wasteland / With a few pockets of humanity”

But it quickly undercuts even that flicker of hope with doubt:

“Humanity may be too strong a word”

That contradiction sets the tone for the entire poem. It's not about catastrophe itself—it's about what was lost in the aftermath. Not just people, but values. Compassion. Empathy. Warmth. The emotional core of who we are.

The poem sketches out a familiar dystopian image—domes, poison air, starvation outside the walls—but what's striking is the emotional detachment of the survivors:

“To keep our community alive / We had to leave our souls behind”

Survival has come at a terrible cost: the erosion of everything that made survival worthwhile. And in the final line—

“Now we are truly lost.”

—we're left not with a story of physical ruin, but of spiritual extinction.

Quick Personal Updates:

  • Treading Water is now available on Amazon. Thank you to everyone who has read it or shared kind words.

  • I'm trying to treat this creative lull as a momentary blip. The words will come again.

If You’re in a Slump Too...
You're not broken. You're resting.
And sometimes the most important writing happens quietly,  beneath the surface, while you think you're doing nothing at all.

Until next time,
Donnie

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