The Writing Life: I Don't Believe in Writer's Block

I don’t. Really. I don’t believe there is a mental disorder that only strikes writers. As my friend the writer Steven Harper Piziks put it: dentists do not wake up in the morning, go into the office, stare at an open mouth and say “OMG, I can’t drill! I just…can’t…drill…” Or if they do, we call it burn out and the smart dentist changes jobs, or gets a better shrink.

But writer’s block is mysterious, it’s dramatic. It is regarded as a sign of true artistic temperment and possibly genius. Because everybody knows Geniuses are tempermental and a little c/r/a/z/y eccentric.

In short, unlike the dentist’s failure to drill demonstrating the symptoms of writer’s block gets you attention and sympathy and even a weird kind of respect. Kind of like the ladies of old Great Britain with their Nerves and Vapors.

Don’t get me wrong, writing is a tough gig and there are days it does not go well. In fact, there are days it doesn’t go at all. I have been stuck, even mired. But usually this is because of something I’m doing, or not doing. Usually, I am not looking at the scene in the right way. I don’t have a clear handle on the goals of the characters, or, worse, I’ve gotten lazy and ignored something important further up the line, or refused to acknowledge that the way I had planned to write the scene is no longer going to work because of changes I’ve made to the plot.

In cases like these, the answer is similar to that with any other sticky problem. Step back. Walk around the block. Take a shower. Do a load of laundry. Work on something else. Come back fresh and ready to do the needed work. Amazing how the words almost seem to rearrange themselves and provide the answer.

This can be hard to do, however, when you’re under pressure. And everyone who writes professionally is under pressure. Writing is a performance art and it is also piece work. You don’t produce, you don’t get paid. You don’t produce, you lose your audience. To make your living eventually something of yourself has got to get out there and face the judges and the judges have to buy it, literally.

Which means there is a condition similar to what gets called writers block.

Stage nerves.

A lot of writer’s block stems from simple fear. Fear of failure, or the less recognized but equally debilitating fear of success. Fear of rejection, criticism or of simply not being able to meet your own standards. This can all make your brain and fingers seize up tight. But it is not mysterious and it is not unique. It’s just fear, pure, simple human fear.

So what do you do? Ultimately, there’s only one thing to do; You put on your big girl panties and you deal. You start meditating, you find a good shrink, you form a support group, you adjust your routine, you write the book that’s just for you and you’re never going to show to anyone so the pressure of having to go on stage is off long enough to prove to yourself that you can still lay words down. You do whatever you have to that does not involve self-destruction. NOTE: If you are doing alchohal, drugs, self-cutting (and I’ve known writers who do all of them), GET HELP NOW. But you do not lie on the sofa eating bon bons and wailing (unless they’re really good bon bons and then you have my permission to do this for three hours on a Sunday afternoon). Or sit in the bar nursing your scotch and wailing. That’s not how pros behave, that’s how my seven-year-old behaves (metaphorically speaking of course).

The ultimate problem, I think is, the Writing Life is one that lets you get away with a lot if you let it. Deadlines tend to be long term. You’re on your own. It’s easy for the bad habits and the self-doubt to creep in and with them the self-justification. But it’s not real. None of it. What’s real is that if you’ve stopped writing there’s a reason, and it’s an identifiable reason and you, the writer, need to find it.

And who knows, your next great idea might be hiding under it.