Writer’s Block
There are movies and books that are dedicated to the (we are led to believe) common issue of “writer’s block.” These movies make the viewer believe that something strange happens to a writer and he or she is no longer able to put words in to sentences and sentences in to paragraphs and paragraphs in to cogent ideas. Somehow and in some way, bad magic or mojo happens and the outcome is a lack of ability to write.
I think it’s a load of ….
Writer’s block is a lazy writer’s way of saying they don’t want to move on to something else for a period of time.
What I mean by that is that a writer is working on a piece of fiction and hits a stopping point. They have a plan. The plan is to get the character from point A to point B. The writer plans for his character to meet a magical beast which will benevolently help the character to point B. However, once your character reaches the magical beast you hit a wall.
Writer’s Block!!!!
This is bad. After all, you had a plan. This was planned. The creature was (boringly) benevolent and going to help the character from one point to another. And then nothing.
No matter what you do, that creature just ain’t going to help your character anywhere. You try to write it this way, and that way, and then another way, and nothing doing, the creature fails your character and you as the writer and you are stuck at point A and not somewhere closer to point B.
Essentially, this is what writer’s block is.
However, I think this is crap. Stinky, smelly, fresh crap.
About a year ago I met a girl. I don’t remember her name. What she said, that stuck with me (though she did not say this to me) was, “I finally got over my writer’s block the other night. I wrote for hours.” At the time, I thought about asking, “What changed to fix the writer’s block?” But, in truth, I decided silence was better and decided to sit and work on whatever it was I was working on at the time. Whether or not she actually produced anything of value, I don’t know. What I do know is that one day she didn’t feel like she had the ability to write and the next day she was writing up a storm.
What I do know is that late night spurts of writing often produce crap.
What I do know is that when you find yourself stuck with benevolent beast not helping (properly) your character, something else is happening.
Something else is not happening to your character, something else is happening to you. Meaning, there may be another direction that was discovered as you wrote that you needed to follow for that character. Maybe the benevolent magical beast is not benevolent, but rather is actually rather malevolent and as such is helping your character with nefarious purposes. Maybe, just maybe, you need to write something else entirely.
And, it is the idea that you need to be writing something else entirely that I am going to follow, for the moment.
You see, writer’s block often comes at awkward times and it is my assertion that one of the causes of writer’s bl0ck is not an mystical inability to write, but rather, a personal inability to realize that your mind and efforts need to be repurposed for a period of time to something else.
Something else could be another writing project, a blog entry, freelance work, professional work, or even the activities that are necessary to live ones life. That’s it. Writer’s block is a personal expression of different needs. For a writer, those other needs probably manifest in other writing projects. For me, “other writing projects” are often representative of my blog, journal, school projects, or just dealing with something that matters to me at that moment.
Which then means that writer’s block is a lack of understanding, by the writer, on what they need to be doing. Moreover, writer’s block is the insistence by an individual that what they are doing, right now, is the only thing they can be doing. My solution for the magical condition is to take stock of one’s life, look at other projects, determine that they’ve 1) eaten and 2) don’t have something more important; and then, after all of that, to go out and stare at a blank piece of paper until they are willing to accept what it is they need to be doing (which could take a very long time) before they go back to writing what they think they need to be doing.
[...] come up with anything. What makes this interesting to me is not that I am writing about this, but that this touches on what I think Writer’s Block is. Whether or not something else needs to be written is less of an issue to me than sitting down [...]