The Strange Freedom of Writing Without the Right Words
How I keep writing when the feeling is larger than the vocabulary
The idea is alive in you but language refuses to follow. That moment when you know exactly what you mean but cannot find a single word that fits.
I often start writing at the place most people stop.
When Language Shrinks and the Feeling Grows
There are moments in this project when the words are simply not enough. I sit down to write a scene and I can feel exactly what I’m reaching for, but the vocabulary refuses to show up. It is like standing in front of a thin veil. I know something is on the other side. I can feel its weight and its outline. I just can’t quite see it yet.
That gap between knowing and naming is usually the sign that I’m finally in the mud. This is when my hands start expressing the air and my tongue starts moving on its own, tasting the words silently.
The poem wants something I don’t have the language for yet.
I have to go in anyway.
Feeling My Way Through
This part always happens instinctively. I start with a clean idea, usually something I pulled from my Excel system, and suddenly it just does not fit anywhere. The words fall apart. I’m lost before I’ve begun. Instead of pushing harder, I step into the fog and let intuition take the wheel. I follow the pulse of the idea, not the language wrapped around it.
It feels strangely freeing. Syntax stops guiding me. The context turns liquid. The poem becomes a forest with roots I keep tripping over, and the only way forward is to feel my way through.
Sounds almost romantic, right?
It’s Digging, Not Thinking
Here I write in impressions and try to feel the textures. Whatever I am trying to reach is hiding just out of sight. I cannot just stand up and go looking for it. Instead I sink deeper.
It is that glossy-eyed kind of focus where you try to pull something up from the bottom of yourself. It feels like walking down branching paths inside your own mind without having a clue where they go or how deep they drop.
Sometimes the turn is so absurd it makes me laugh out loud. I once started a poem with some fancy intention and ended up writing about fast food and DoorDash. My brain tossed the idea at me from nowhere, and I just grabbed it.
The shift made no sense and felt completely right. This poem had picked a different door, and in that short moment I was open and brave enough to walk through it.
Co-Writing with Your Weirdness
Sometimes, when meaning hides, the rhythm helps to fill in the blanks. Sometimes I use silence instead. Negative space shows me what is missing, what is unsaid. My intuition grabs a memory, a stray metaphor, a childhood scene.
I often end up describing something with words that technically do not belong. I once compared the atmosphere of social media to the feeling of performing for dolls as a kid. On paper it makes no sense. Emotionally it landed with perfect accuracy. The poem understood something before I did, again.
To me that is poetry at its best.
Whether you are the one writing or the one reading it.
Taking a Breath
When a poem grabs me like this, it is both fun and humbling. Sometimes I honestly feel like I am stealing from the ether. I look at the lines and wonder if these are even my words. Where did they come from.
This is when I need to take a step back and let it breathe. When I return to the poem after some distance, I can see what I actually created. If it has the potential to resonate with someone else. If it is worth publishing.
I have sort of tamed it now, and I get to polish it if I want. At this point the poem usually behaves. Poem should never be pinned down, but to leave it with enough mystery so it can travel on with someone else.
Poetry is never a clean explanation. It is more like a shakedown or a gentle direction.
Building Worlds with Poetry
Working at the limits of language has taught me that I don’t need to know where a poem is going. But I do need to understand its fantasy realm and its dystopian frames, the poem’s playfield if you like.
Sure, I need words to write, but I cannot let the words lead me. The Hush Halo grows deeper because I let it lead. Yet I still need a sense of the larger direction.
The unknown is not a problem.
It is the whole point.
If you compare, creating common content is like building Legos with instructions. Writing poetry is building Legos without instructions, during an earthquake. You work with what you have, without much control. It’s only when everything settles, you can start fixing it.
In The Hush Halo I write about the realms and backstories mostly for myself. They are tools I lean on as I build this dystopian fantasy world. My way of keeping my Legos, well, maybe not in a box, but at least within reach.
Every wrong word might become the real one.
You haven't just described writer's block. You've mapped the sacred geography of creation itself.
We believe the work happens in the light of clarity, where words are obedient and logic reigns. You've shown that the real work happens in the "Hush Halo"—that fertile, wordless void before language arrives.
This is the fundamental truth: Creation doesn't begin with expression. It begins with a brave, groping descent into the pre-linguistic self. You aren't searching for words; you are allowing the feeling to demand its own vocabulary.
You are proving that the most profound intelligence is not verbal, but somatic. It's the wisdom of the body—the hands expressing the air, the tongue tasting silence. You are thinking with your nervous system, not your dictionary.
This isn't just how to write a poem. This is how to listen to a soul.
Hi Sam! I truly enjoyed this, thank you! In our modern hyper control society even creative feel compelled to control their processes of creation. You destroy that false approach completely, as it should be.
I liked Mo's comments. I would add an additional layer onto his concept of the somatic source of our thoughts and ideas.
Yes, our bodies contain a memory of all that came before us that became the genesis of who we are. After all we were born from the expressions of love between thousands of couples, parents, grandparents, etc. Each one of those moments of love is embedded in our bodies.maybe great-great-great grandma Marcy is in my middle finger as I slide my fingers through my granddaughter's hair will braiding it wilh mine, and Marcy's love, appreciation, and adoration of this next generation of one continual love story.
But beyond our somatic memory and heritage, our souls were formed and exist in spirit, created and endowed into our bodies by the "Great Spirit" as our Native American called it. Modern Western culture calls it the Hoky Spirit. This is where our own soul and operative spirit derives from, and which is still connected to! Just like the life-rythm of your heartbeat of your body is a continuum from yout mom's heartbeat, and her mom's, etc, all the way back to the first heartbeat that was created by God.
So I believe that the place of origin of our most authentic-self-poems is from the harmonic resonance of our own soirit/soul with the Holy Spirit which is God itself, the origin of everything that has ever been created! Thus "harmonuc resonance" of each our own spirits with the Hiky Spirit brings us poems without words but poems that are authenticly unique to each of us as our own souls and spirits mingle with that of the Holy Soirit, making us an indispensable co-operator in the creation of the new work, poem, thought, and action in our lives!
We are embodied spirit-people, and both our bodies and souls are who wr are.
As a side note, there are also malevolent spirits that exists apart from the Hoky Spirit. These spirits can also reach out to you through the same interplay of your spirit and theirs. You will know them by their lack of compassion and love. They are full of sel pride and ego in defiance of all that is Love, Kindness, Peace, and Mercy. I suggest giving no attention or participation to these spirits. They will bring no health, happiness, or joy into your life. Rather, only the opposite. Remember, you are the sovereign over which "harmonic resonances you allow to enter you and take form within you. This is part of your creative role in choosing and co-mingling your spirit with what is presented to you.
I say the because, if I remember, you are interested in dystopian fiction. The origin for this interest is often from the Hoky Spirit as it resonates its disgust of the extortion, selfishness, brutality, etc, of dystopian environs. Bringing these destructive aspects. to the awareness of people is a good thing. Yet, also, there is a malevolent side of the genre that can aggrandize the dysfunction and promote it as an acceptable, even noble, view of society is a very distorted way. I reccomend choosing not to celebrate dystopianism, but reveal it for the anti-human thing that it is.
So sorry to the lingering lingering comment! I really enjoyed reading this piece of yours!
Carry on! Peace and Blessings to you and yours!
✨️🕊🙏🎊✨️