Writers Block is a Lie

We are all familiar with the trope: the image of the tormented writer sitting at his desk, staring at a blank page, agonizing over what to say, what to write, feeling like he is unable to even begin. Or perhaps it is that of the painter, standing before a blank canvas at a complete loss as to where to begin applying color, creating shape and form, giving life to his vision. My personal favorite is the struggling songwriter, sitting in front of his piano, trying to find a rhyme to a lyric or a lick to complete his masterpiece, only to pound his head against the keys, crying out in exasperation.

“I’ll never get it! Never!!”

I know that many of us who are writers, artists or content creators of any kind are familiar with the fear of being stuck, feeling like we know what we want to say but don’t know where to begin. Where does this fear come from? What is the source of this seemingly overwhelming disconnect between ideas and actions? Where does the inspiration to find a beginning, middle and end a piece of writing come from, and how can we find a way to connect to it more readily and consistently?

What if I told you that there's actually no such thing as writers block at all. That’s right, I said it. No such thing - doesn’t exist. Writers block is a lie!

Okay, so maybe that is a bit of an oversimplification of the matter, but when confronted with a mental or emotional block of any kind, its best we do what we can to disempower and diffuse it as quickly as possible.

One of the toughest teachers I ever had was my university composition professor. This was a man who was notorious for bringing his students to tears in class (music majors everywhere can relate to this, I am sure) but he gave me one of the most valuable skills I've been blessed enough to acquire in the course of my lifetime. He showed me how to take a few simple notes and create melodies seemingly out of thin air. Through a variety of methods for melodic development, a composer is able to organically grow and cultivate a musical idea into something just as long or short as need be. In much the same way that students of jazz study improvisation, the ability to spontaneously compose thematic ideas on one’s instrument, we study harmonic progressions and modes, forms and patterns, relationships of intervals - and we use these tools create.

This applies to music, but it also applies to other forms of writing and creativity. The same idea of starting with a few simple notes and developing a piece of music can and do translate to starting with a few simple words and creating a poem, a short story or a novel.

Most of us who have studied writing of text should be familiar the concept of freeform or “stream of consciousness” writing; the practice of sitting down to write, engaging in the act of creating, without any form, structure or preconceived notions of what the end result is to be. Simply writing random words, thoughts and sentences, even if they don’t seem to make any sense. This is an exercise that is good for greasing the wheels as it were, getting the juices flowing and getting the words to come to us as if almost by force.

All of us should be well aware of the fact that inspiration can not be forced; our muse will not ever be held hostage or cajoled into doing our bidding. No, she is far too clever and powerful for that. However, we as creators are not slaves to our muses either. Truthfully, we and our supposed “muse” are one and the same. We have control of our own output, now and always. One simply needs to step up and own that responsibility.

Turning the often incoherent randomness of our free-form writing is a process of culling and refining our drafts. It may feel like a daunting task or like panning for gold, praying for a miracle as we sift through all of the muck and silt to find the true essence of what we are trying to communicate. In the process of doing this, we may see a path materialize that leads us toward a goal we have been trying to reach. We might even find a new way to get where we are trying to go, or find that we’ve ended up at a destination we did not expect.

To better illustrate what I mean, here is an exercise you can try. Let’s choose three simple words, any words. You can choose whatever words you like, but here are three that just quickly come to mind for me:

Mailbox

Playground

Light-switch.

You may notice that, for whatever reason I happened to have chosen three compound words. That is, three words that are made up of other words. So let’s break this down some more and write out each individual word:

Mail

Box

Play

Ground

Light

Switch

So we have a decent list of words now, each having its own meaning and associated imagery. Our job now is to draw relationships between these ideas, much like playing connect the dots.

I went to the playground to play in the sandbox.

I turned on the light-switch so I could read my mail.

I used to send my mail via USPS Ground, but then I switched to Express Mail.

Now that we have three, seemingly silly sentences that may appear to have nothing to do with one another, our job is to find a way to connect these three independent ideas in a way that makes sense.

Coming home from work last night, and I stopped to check the mailbox before heading inside the house. Once inside, I had to flip on the light-switch to read my mail because it was late and it was getting dark out. There was a letter from my sister. She was telling me about my niece, whom she had just taken to the playground to play in the sandbox. This reminded me that my nieces birthday was coming up next week. I made a note to myself to go out and get a card for her in the morning. Normally I would have sent it via USPS Ground, but this time I would have to switch to Express Mail in order to ensure that the card reaches her in time for her birthday.

We’ve gone from three simple words, to having a wealth of characters, actions and events. The characters are the narrator, the narrator’s sister and the narrator’s niece. The actions or events are the evening, coming home from work, checking the mail, turning on the light switch, getting up in the morning to go to the store and buy a a birthday card, sending the card, switching from ground service to express service and of course, the narrator’s niece’s birthday.

From here we can go on to explore the relationship between these characters, and we can perhaps do this best by asking ourselves some questions about them: What is the relationship between the narrator and his/her sister? How do they feel about one another? Do they communicate often or seldom? Do they live far apart or near to one another? What is their personal history? How old is the niece and how does she feel about the narrator? What is the nature of their relationship?

Being curious about these people and scenarios that we’ve seemingly conjured up out of nowhere, asking ourselves these questions and allowing our minds to explore the vast possibilities is just one way of creating something out of nothing. You might still find yourself afraid of committing to any one answer for any of these questions, feeling that you might not be creating the best possible scenario. I would implore you not to overthink any of it. Just go with your gut and get it out.

Remember, we live in an imperfect world. There’s no such thing as the perfect answer, or the perfect story. Every project we do, every piece of writing or art that we create is all a part of a greater journey and a larger body of work. When you are done, and you’ve made all the possible revisions that you can make within a reasonable allotment of time, you can look back on what you’ve created, and anything you still do not like or wish you could have done differently, consider it a lesson learned that you can apply to your next work.

There is a lot more I can say regarding my personal philosophies on the creative process. I will write and share more in future postings. Next I will talk more about how this same process can be applied to other forms of creativity, such as the visual arts. For now, if you feel you are struggling to complete a project and feel as though you are blocked, here is some things for you to think about:

Anyone can have an idea, it's what you do with that idea that ultimately makes the difference. By this same logic, anyone can find themselves stuck with a bout of writers block, but it’s how you get out of it that will make all the difference.