false 5 1 false false Mon Sep 28 04:54:06 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 28 09:07:18 -0700 2009
There was a period of time this summer where I simply could not write *at all.* I tried everything--I tried to read book about writers block like The Midnight Disease. Nothing in them helped me. I went to different places to try and write. Nothing. I made myself sit down with only my AlphaSmart and refused to get up for three hours or until I'd at least written something. The hours would pass, and I would write nothing.

And then I'd cry.

I was slowly but surely becoming convinced I'd never write again, and it broke my heart. (All of me felt broken, actually)

And then I saw this book in my local bookstore and took a look at it. And what I read blew me away. Pressfield doesn't talk about specifically about writer's block but about Resistance, and the thing he said that made me buy the book, take it home and read the first two sections over and over again (the third one is about muses and things and I'm not into that) was this:

"Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it by our very fear of it."

All those things I'd done to try and make myself write and I'd never once stopped to think about WHY I wasn't writing. But Pressfield got me to do that, and he got me to realize that it was my fears that were stopping me, and that writing can't be about overcoming everything that's got you trapped in a corner or scared. It has to--and must be--simply about the writing.

It's not easy to overcome those fears, and I keep a copy of The War of Art next to what I'm currently working on, and turn to it when I need a reminder that it's okay to be afraid, and that the important thing is to keep going.


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