Writer's Block

by Moira Russell

It can be said there are two kinds of writers - those who have had writer's block, and those who fear it. Is it a disease? Can it be "cured"? If you've had it once, will you have it again? What is it? And what about those fortunate (curse them!) writers who claim that there's no such thing as Writer's Block, or, at any rate, that they've never had it?

People with "writer's block" can be divided into roughly two groups: people who don't/can't write at all, but want to intensely, and people who are able to write, or even earn a living at writing, but who aren't able to write what they most want to (an example would be a poet who writes technical computer manuals). It should be noted that the second condition can rapidly develop into the first - as with most progressive diseases, the longer writer's block goes on, the worse it gets. There are other sets - writers who do write, but who don't publish, and writers who have written one or even two published - even successful! - books but who now find themselves stuck.

Rather than going into all possible avenues of what causes writer's block - society, upbringing, psychology, biochemistry, unlucky stars - let's just define it as when someone feels the need to write, and yet, for whatever reason - often, most maddeningly, they don't know - they can't. (There are of course some external conditions linked with writer's block - depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse - which can cause writer's block as well, but at best those disorders should be treated first as they can harm many more areas of a writer's life than "just" writing.)

What's the magic word?

What doesn't help is that many writers - indeed, many creative artists in general - are superstitious about how and why they write, the mechanics behind how they create; while there are a lot of writers who happily discuss "process" in interviews and on personal websites, there are also a fair number who feel if they talk about It, It will somehow be lost. Creativity and magical thinking seem to go, unfortunately, hand-in-hand, because creativity so often seems like magic.

While nowadays health insurance programs cover courses me medication and results-based limited sessions of treatments like cognitive therapy, when long-term Freudian analysis was more popular, writers often resisted analysis, fearing they would cure their psyches but kill their art - a position not helped by Edmund Wilson's popular critical work The Wound and the Bow, which took the Freudian position that writers were essentially working out their neuroses through art. No more neurosis - no more creativity. This makes writer's block even more difficult to talk about, if even the writing process itself is shrouded in mystery - not to mention the shame that writers also feel when not being able to write.

On the other hand, writers will often freely, if somewhat abashedly, admit to personal fetishes or "tricks" - always writing on one color paper, always writing with one particular make of pen, never starting work before or after nine in the morning, anything to force the cork out of the bottle and call forth the genie. The number and nature of such keys are legion. One writer supposedly sat outside on his porch watching cars go by, waiting for a license plate with the numbers "666" in it to turn up. Once he'd spotted his quarry, he went inside and cheerfully headed straight to work.

One can imagine a sympathetic but firm therapist coaxing a writer from such behavior like a child with a favorite blanket: Do you really, really need to do that? our therapist might ask. And our writer might honestly return, You know, I really, really do.

Not all keys are fetishes, of course, and in fact most books on writer's block devote a healthy chunk of chapters to tips and tricks that can be used in a sort of oblique manner: if you can't outwrestle your opponent, slip around him. A frequent piece of advice in such books is to write in five- or fifteen-minute-long increments, even going so far as to set an alarm clock or buy an old-fashioned oven timer. By setting a limit to your writing time, the task begins to look less incomprehensible - anything finite at this point is a help - and you may even get a great idea and have to stop in the middle of your scribbling, impatient for the writing period to begin again so you can finish.

Conversely, another piece of advice is, if you've managed to get going, stop before you want to, or while you're on a roll, rather than writing til you run dry or hit a snag (advice as old as Hemingway). The rationale seems simple enough - if you stop when you're feeling good, you'll associate writing with feeling good, and go back to it with pleasure; if you finally give up in frustration because you've been hacking away for an hour or two, you'll be that much more reluctant to go back to your piece (most likely because you'll also feel the compulsion to fix that part before you can let yourself go on to anything else).

Another key is to "let" yourself write only for one paragraph - or one page - or for even just a hundred words. Once the initial silence is broken, often the result is you'll find yourself writing for far longer a period than you first intended.

You'll Never Walk Alone

No one can quite shore up and simultaneously deflate an overworked psyche like a friend, especially a good one, and another frequent suggestion to "cure" writer's block is to write with other people. Joining a writer's group is so often prescribed it can begin to seem like the panacea for all ills, but as Natalie Goldberg points out in her seminal classic, Writing Down the Bones, scheduling time for yourself - just as if you were scheduling a doctor's appointment - can lend the process a seriousness the writer might not ascribe to it otherwise. Making an appointment to write at ten PM or ten AM every day is a lot different than promising yourself you'll squeeze in an hour once the dishes are done, once the children are in bed, once this program's over, or when you really feel like it.

Goldberg also helpfully points out that if you tend to "stand yourself up," scheduling time with a writing buddy can do the trick. People who stand themselves up or dismiss their own plans will think that's too rude to do to someone else, particularly a friend. (It's usually helpful to make a bargain that once you meet, you'll start writing right away, though, or else the time scheduled can dribble away in catching up on personal business or, worse, talking about how the both of you can't write.)

Taking a writing class, even if you aren't in school or aren't sure whether or not you "belong," is another way of helping yourself with an external goad, especially if the class is being taken for credit and your grade depends on turning in work in time. Some writing groups require members to submit a manuscript within a certain amount of time after joining the group, or else have you drop out to resubmit later.

The myth that the best writing is done alone in a solitary cell in front of a blank brick wall is perhaps one of the most enduring romantic ideas about creation in the twentieth century, along with ideas such as: it's impossible to write while holding down a full-time job (it's hard, but not impossible), and that if you write simply to a deadline or given topic, rather than waiting to be inspired by your muse, you'll turn out junk. The latter is particularly seductive - but remember this: the stories that are easily written are sometimes the least interesting, and a blank page is inferior to everything.

Just Write

One of the best ways to crack through writer's block and get interested in - or even excited by - writing again is to write answers to a series of questions, or entries on a list, or to write improvisations around set prompts. Writer's groups, when they're not critiquing, can often set periods of time devoted to just writing - fifteen minutes on the sentence "Green colorless ideas sleep furiously," go! (Some very good prompts and lists are available at Purdue's Online Writing Lab and Suite101.com.)

Although this goes contrary to the idea of writing til you're empty (which we've already seen might not be the best method), taking frequent breaks can also help. Write for fifteen minutes, take fifteen minutes off. Write for an hour, take half an hour off. If you find yourself itching to get back to your writing before the time's up, make yourself sit and wait - at least the first few times. Take your mind off your writing, if you can - wash a dish, look at a magazine, read a chapter of a favorite book. By lessening the amount of time you sit frozen in front of your monitor or notebook staring helplessly into space, you also make the time you try to spend writing less traumatic. There's also the old-fashioned method of rewarding yourself, rather than sitting silently berating yourself for not being able to do it: after you've wrapped up for the day, buy a book you've wanted for a while, watch a DVD, take a walk, even have a piece of candy (or fruit). Treat yourself.

More importantly, be aware of when you start to berate yourself or slip into negative patterns of thought ("I can't write, I'll never be a writer, I'll never finish this, I'll never finish anything"). By recognizing either their absurdity or the simple fact they don't contain the whole truth, rather than struggling against them or giving in to purely negative judgments, you can avoid getting caught up in defending your self-worth and get back to the act of writing.

One specialty in hostage negotiation said the psychology of those able to escape, or just survive - like Michael Durant in Somalia, say - was they were able to focus on and praise themselves for seemingly small victories. Any opportunity for positive reinforcement, no matter how small, was seized on. As a result, the captives were able to somehow keep up their optimism and belief that they would be rescued or find a way out, which often enabled them to take opportunities they might not otherwise have been able to if they'd been mired in depression.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Although this doesn't affect quite as many people, there's also the writer who's affected by positive public and economic response. Some classic examples are Hardy giving up novels for poetry, Truman Capote supposedly working for decades on roman a clef novel about high society, and Joseph Mitchell sitting in the offices of the New Yorker unable to write a word after receiving praise so high it was apparently crippling. Simple economic need can be a crude prod, but if it's removed, a writer can feel a sudden devastating lack of necessity). A number of successful books can be equally problematic - the pressure on writing can paradoxically become greater, not less - "I did it last time, but how can I do it this time?" Add to that the insistence many publishers have on establishing a niche market or fitting an author into a known genre proven to sell, and the disappointment of readers who frequently demand that a writer produce a book "just like the last one, but even better," and publishing - even successfully - can start to seem like one more handicap rather than an affirmation and reward.

Sometimes the inability to say anything is the fear that you won't be able to say something which someone else has already said, much better than you ever could. Overweening ambition is another hurdle which can be sidestepped by the use of lists or prompts, or the writing of "sketches" or "mood pieces." If you can convince the internal censor "I'm not really writing right now" or "This doesn't really count," you can get back to work.

A combination of taking yourself seriously to schedule as much time as you can for yourself - as much as job, family, and other external responsibilities permit - while breaking up that time with exercises, timed writing or even just "writing about how you can't write" (the last refuge of the desperate) can open the floodgates.


MORE HELP FOR WRITER'S BLOCK

The Writer's Block - Everything from advice on what writer's block is and how to fix it to the amazing Write-o-Matic.

The New Yorker addresses writer's block.

Elizabeth Moon's take on writer's block.

Writers-block.org's thought-provoking writer's block-related artwork.

Writing Down the Bones Natalie Goldberg's classic how-to-write work, as practical as it is inspirational.