A Journey through Writer's Block
There is often an assumption made that writer’s block is all one thing. That also implies there is one single solution for all writer’s block. But actually it’s a complex of factors, and for each writer, different ones may be in play, and even the same reasons can have different impacts. It is, however, something many writers struggle with over the course of their careers, it’s significant, and it can be a career stopper.
Like many others, I have struggled with writer’s block. I developed a solid case right after I graduated college. Since I was about twelve, I was writing like mad, finishing three drafts of an unpublished novel in high school, completing another in college, and starting a third that I was quite excited about. In college, my classes were interesting and stimulating, and I was in an environment that was conducive to the expression of ideas. That helped spark a wild rush of creativity that I thought couldn’t be stopped for almost anything. I wrote volumes, came up with ideas for even more stories, and worked on elaborate worldbuilding for my different fantasy worlds. I was on fire.
And then I graduated. Suddenly, instead of having interesting courses and people to discuss fascinating ideas with, I was expected to get a full-time job and to head into the adult working world. I discovered that a B.A. in Linguistics got me a clerical job rather than a fascinating internship of some sort, and that I was surrounded by people I had little in common with. (Not disparaging people in clerical jobs, but in the middle 80’s there was a certain office culture that I did not fit, and which I had trouble comprehending). I was stuck with the mind-numbing tasks of spending eight hours a day filing hospital patient reports into hospital charts.
That was when the severe depression I had experienced in high school came back full-force, and I ran into the wall of writer’s block. I couldn’t think of anything to write. I didn’t want to write. My imagination wasn’t completely depleted, but the thought of putting it down on the computer was painful. Even after returning to school, first for a few courses, then for an ill-fated semester term of graduate school (derailed by depression, not poor grades), I couldn’t find the energy to write. During this time I did join a local workshop, and the few pieces I turned out were done under the pressure of getting a piece done for the workshop. Most of them were not very good, either. My writer’s block was trailing me like a cat following a laser pointer. I wanted to finish the novel I’d started in college, but I couldn’t make myself write. I couldn’t make myself do much of anything creative. I even stopped reading as much, for the first time in my life, also decreasing my net creativity.
It culminated with a long bout of illness in the mid-90’s. By then I was married and had two children. I was unable to work, depressed both clinically and about my entire life, and was at one of the lowest points in my life. And that was when I made a decision.
I was a writer. And that meant I had to write.
Easy enough to say. After all, hadn’t I been wanting to do that since college graduation? But for whatever reason, it was a watershed moment, the point in time when I stopped saying, “I wish I could write,” and moved into saying, “How do I get myself to write?” It was a commitment born of desperation, but it was the one part of me I wasn’t willing to let go. And so I started analyzing and breaking down what things were keeping me back.
There were several. One was the effort of putting down words on a regular basis when I wasn’t feeling inspired. One was the major depression I was experiencing, which kept telling me I couldn’t really do it. One was the perfectionism that told me it was useless writing unless the words I set down were immediately beautiful, evocative, and haunting. One was the fact that I tended to feel less like writing when someone decided to tear my work to shreds. One was the fact that I had a television set and a toddler next to my desk. There may have been others I can’t think of off the top of my head. But the breakdown enabled me to examine and tackle each issue separately, rather than getting buried under the mountain of reasons, excuses, and triggers which, added together, were far too heavy for me to lift as a single process.
I had achieved good success with a writing schedule in the past; I went back to it. I told myself that I needed to write two pages a day, inspired or not. Two pages was something I could sustain, even if what I wrote was basically gibberish. I went after the question of whether it was worth writing if my work wasn’t immediately great by acknowledging the possibility of revision. By separating those two things, I gave myself an extra chance to create good work, while simultaneously lifting the pressure, which circumvented the depression as well. And I put my ability to concentrate to work ignoring the fact that I was writing beside such edifying cartoons as Maya the Bee. That one was pretty much something I had to force my way through, though it got a lot better when we moved not long afterward and I had my own office finally.
Finally, I removed myself from the kind of destructive criticism that made me doubt everything I did, and asked a friend to read my rejection letters for me. I left the workshop I had joined in the 80’s and looked around for another until some friends and I established one that worked. I still workshop, but I workshop in an environment which encourages me rather than discourages me. Though criticism is vital in growing as a writer, there is a kind that tears down and a kind that builds up, and I only respond to the second.
And I found something fascinating happen. My writing got better. The plodding, methodic method I was using enabled me to put words down that I would never have thought I could produce. I started to learn how to consciously achieve specific effects, rather than writing intuitively. And more importantly, I was writing. I started publishing in the early 2000’s, and have been steadily publishing short stories since. Now I also have a novel and a novella added to my body of work. That piece of advice that more experienced authors give to those having difficulty proved, in my case, to be true: In order to be able to write, you must write.
I’m not saying that all writer’s block behaves this way. In fact, I know it doesn’t. I know many people who have experienced writer’s block for completely different reasons than I have, and some who have found very different solutions. But I think the basic issue of breaking it down into manageable chunks is possibly a first step in working with it. Because the more monolithic the problem looks, the more difficult it is to challenge.