Is There Such a Thing as Writer’s Block?

I recently interviewed Jerome Preisler, a New York Times bestselling author, for my new podcast show. During the interview, we spent some time discussing writer’s block. He said that it doesn’t exist. Writers sometimes just have to push themselves to write.

Since the interview, I’ve given this a lot of thought. If Bo Bichette is in a hitting slump, does his coach sit him on the bench? No. You can’t get out of a slump on the bench. He might get some extra coaching between games to help him with his struggles, but he can only get over that hump by facing live pitching in real games. Similarly, an actor in a theatre company has a case of stage fright as she is about to step on the stage. Does she tell the director that she is not up to it today? No. She pulls herself together and steps out on the stage. Maybe she stumbles slightly with her first line but quickly finds her stride and continues. They don’t find other things to do until they feel up to it again. Their craft doesn’t allow for that.

Unless you have a deadline imposed on you, a writer doesn’t have fans or an audience waiting for something from you at that moment. You can wake up in the morning and say to yourself, I’m not feeling it today. I’ll do something else. I have a huge pile of laundry. I need to go through my emails. Look at this great video on TikTok. There are so many distractions and too many excuses. As writers, in many cases, we are accountable only to ourselves. Often we fail.

This is the reason why many writers take advantage of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. You join a group and commit to writing 50,000 words for the month. You have your peers to support you. There’s no failure in not meeting the target. If you mange only 34,000 words, you are farther ahead than you were on November 1. Doesn’t it come down to self-discipline and accountability? You need to find ways to motivate yourself. Turn off the phone. Get rid of distractions and crutches. Commit to writing each day. Commit to a time period each day. If you only manage 200 words. It’s progress. Like the baseball hitter who draws a walk during a slump. At least he got on base.

I went through an extended period of not writing this year. I had many reasons including health, mental state, too busy with querying, etc. It wasn’t writer’s block. It was avoidance. I had gone through an extremely productive period during the pandemic and had lost my mojo. But it will never come back if you don’t sit in front of the computer.