Honestly. I do not believe in it, and I believe giving it a name makes it a bugaboo, like a syndrome or disorder that comes to be the attribution for counterproductive behaviors. “Why I can’t I write? Augh! I have ‘writer’s block!'”
If you truly want to write, you will. About something, anything. Why am I currently writing this blog entry? Because I want to write. When I am not writing, it’s because I am doing something I want or need to do other than writing. Might be mowing the yard, might be playing Alpha Centauri, might be watching Looney Tunes DVDs, might be making something to eat. Right now I want to write, and I’m doing so.
“But what do you do when you sit down to write and nothing comes?” I so often hear. Well, here’s the usual dialogue:
“Here’s what I do. I go to my filing cabinet.”
“Your filing cabinet? Is that where you keep your file of ideas?”
“No, it’s where I keep my file copies of contracts. I pull out the most recent one and skip down to the part where the para begins ‘You will write…’ I read that paragraph carefully, as it delineates what I agreed to do. Then I skip down to the paragraph that says ‘You will be compensated…’ I take careful note of the parts that point out, in short, that if I don’t do my work I won’t get paid, and if it sucks, I also won’t get paid.”
“And how the hell does that help you feel inspired to write?”
“It doesn’t help me feel inspired. Inspiration is for creating art, and my writing is my job, not my art. It does help me feel motivated. As in, ‘you better sit your butt down there and get it done.’ I rarely even need this, because I like to write. Nearly all the time when I have work to do, I like it and want to do it. And when I don’t, tough; it’s a job. I accepted it. Time to knock it out, get ‘er done.”
“Okay, fine, but I’m working on my science fiction novel and I don’t have any contract at all to read, and I’m not getting paid any time soon. I’m stuck! How do I get unstuck?”
This part is hard. “If you can’t figure out where to take your story, you need to do some thinking. But if you know where you want it to go, and can’t put it on paper, then you don’t want to write badly enough right then. If you did, you’d just start writing whatever part of it you thought of first, and fix it later.”
“Uh…but….” They taper off into silence. I just dropped a bomb. I said the thing you can’t say. I may just have blown their supposed ‘writer’s block’ to gravel (I was certainly trying my level best), but it’ll take time to process that. I just challenged their basic desire to write, the unchallengeable. They look at me like I’m the kind of cold S.O.B. that just isn’t supposed to exist in the “Oh, for a muse…” world of Writer’s Digest. Well, yeah. I’m a freelancer, a literary mercenary. If you want feelgood advice that will reinforce all your existing perceptions, I’m the worst person to ask. However, I don’t get jollies from the fact of jolting eager psyches, so I soften it…
“It’s true. If you think about it, you aren’t sure where to start with what you want to say, and you don’t want to redo it all later. Sorry, more bad news: you will anyway, so just embrace that. Start with something, anything, even if you have to throw 90% of it away later. Any writing at all is progress, and not writing is zero progress. If you clearly understood and absorbed this, you will now desire to go immediately to your computer and begin banging keys.”
“(various confused and noncommittal responses)”
Now, none of this bothers me. I’m used to it, it’s part of what I do, like a hardware store owner being asked by his brother-in-law about caulking. Only two things bother me:
- Arguing with me, trying to tell me how wrong I am. Maybe I am, but you aren’t paying me for this advice, so if you don’t like it, or find it an annoyance, debating me is useless to you. You gain nothing except that you can be sure that you’ll never have to worry about getting free advice from me again. Do I mind healthy disagreement? Not at all–but something I am doing is working, so what I say can’t be too totally incredible. And if what someone is doing is not working, then where is the knowledge basis for debating me? This blog began purely because my favorite author gave me some stern, kind, wise advice: “You must start a blog. People who like your writing want more of it, often, and you need to learn to think in terms of giving it to them. They want to know the mundane stuff you can’t imagine anyone would care about. You must have your own domain. You must learn to present yourself in your profession.” Did I argue with her? Hell’s bells, no. I went and did it, within two days.
- Ignoring what I said, and continuing to seek approval for the dysfunctional methods they’re currently using. If you wanted to know, why did you just ignore everything I said? Surely you can understand that if I think you’re doing it wrong, I gain no happiness from having to break that to you. It’s a service. Freely given, but please think of what it’s like to be simply ignored and have the same thing thrown back at you. It feels ineffectual for me. It makes me want to stop. I don’t fundamentally want to stop. I like to help people. I hope what I say will help them write more productively and happily. If I’m not perceived as an authority, why ever ask me?
This has wandered afield from the topic a bit, I acknowledge, but it does all pertain (if tangentially) to the busting of this mythical ‘writer’s block.’ If you stopped believing in the concept, and started writing–something–anything–even a piece on abuse of the em dash, like someone on Salon recently did–the concept would go away. Bang out 300 words about how frustrated you are. Describe your beer can opener. Rhapsodize about five hairs on your arm. Write a scathing rebuttal to this, telling me I’m full of baloney. You will be writing. That’s the idea, is it not?
Writers want to write. Non-writers want to talk about how cool it would be to write, or why they can’t write.
And if writers know they should blog, and have no idea at all what to write about some night, you can see what happens.
The Editorial Maverick 