The Never Ending Interview: Day Four

One question a day will be addressed, for as long as it remains interesting to me, and the questions keep coming.

Today’s question was asked by Jayne Spencer, aka @SnowWhiteWolf.



Jayne: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block, and if so do you have any sort of ritual behavior to cure it?

Bill: I go through cycles of skepticism on whether or not writer’s block truly exists. At times I suspect (especially in light of how well I know myself) it’s just a cover for laziness. In most cases I expect that’s exactly what’s behind it, and nothing more profound.

In some cases, also nearly as frequent, it’s down to a lack of nerve – a matter of listening too much to that constant internal voice that says, “You’re not a real writer and you’re not capable of doing this. Quit and suffer a little embarrassment now, to save yourself the greater embarrassment later, when everyone discovers what a fraud you are and have been all along.”

That voice has been with me all my life, through every single thing I’ve ever attempted to write, and succeeded in writing. I only admit to it because, if the anecdotal evidence from nearly every colleague I’ve ever spoken to is correct, it’s nearly a universal condition. Everyone in the writing trade seems to have some version of the same damning voice, constantly whispering the same poisonous crap in their mind’s ear.

However, there have been rare times when the willingness to sit down and work is high, the inner voice is as quiet as it ever is, and still the writing won’t come. It’s at these times when I am reluctantly willing to consider the possibility that actual writer’s block exists.

I have no rituals to overcome those rare times.

I do however have a solution or two that’s worked for me in the past.

First, I never have only one writing project in operation at any one time. Sometimes I wish that it were so, but it never is. I always have two or three (or much, much more) projects going at any one time, all with an editor, or agent, or publisher somewhere screaming for me to get it in. When I simply can’t work on one given story, I switch to another.

Writer’s block, if it actually exists, seems to be story specific. The ideas and words and sentences that won’t come for one story, doesn’t seem to be able to keep ideas and words and sentences from coming to the next one down the list.

Sometimes though, a given story is so immanent (read late) that I can’t afford the time to switch to the next one to overcome a block. In that case I switch to the next solution for breaking through the block. I simply write down what’s supposed to happen in the story. I don’t try for art. I don’t worry one bit about a clever turn of phrase. Erudition goes right out the window. The need for succinct sinks. I simply start filling in the blank space from where I last left off with notes, dry and inartful, about what needs to happen next. It often comes out as something like stream-of-conscious letter writing to myself, like so:

Okay, so writer’s block has got me, but I can’t let that stop my working. So here’s what needs to happen in this bit of the story, which you will then come back and fix and polish when your mighty artsy fartsy powers return.

Bob needs to hide his wife’s body. He needs to cut it up into small bits before he tries to haul it downstairs and out of the building, because he knows Mrs. Bottlerocket down in 4G is always peeping out of her door, always taking note of the various comings and goings in the entire apartment building. A large, body-sized bag will certainly attract her attention, along with who know’s how many others?

Bob’s no genius, but he is smart enough to know he can’t take that kind of chance. So he’s going to cut her up in the tub, package her up in several tiny packages, well wrapped in plastic and then concealed in different sorts of outer packaging – never the same sort of package twice – and remove her from the crime scene over a period of days.

But Bob doesn’t own a saw. So buying a saw down at the Ace Hardware is job number one. Do some sort of bit here where Bob can’t help providing explanations to the store clerk and the doorman, and a few other people, on why he suddenly needs a saw, even though not one of them would care less, if Bob weren’t blurting out all these cover stories.

Now, how is Bob going to explain the absence of his wife over the next few days?

See how it works? I quit trying to tell the story. I switch to telling myself what the story is going to be, once I am able to come back and actually tell the story. Usually, at some point in the process, whatever is keeping me blocked goes away (like many bullies, he runs away if you stand up to him), and the place-holding notes turns back into actual writing.

The solutions for those other times mentioned above are even more basic. When I’m simply being lazy, I scold myself to get my fat, lazy ass in gear and get to work. Sometimes I have someone else around to do that scolding for me – or with me. When it’s the inner voice telling me I can’t do it, I don’t try to argue with the inner voice. In fact I agree with it whole-heartedly. I am a cheat and I can’t actually write and somehow my past work has gotten published fraudulently. And that means I am a successful con man, a bamboozler, a flimflam artist, a swindler, and my life is a series of caper flicks – a delightful and never ending madcap romp, if you will. At some point the absurdity of the exchange crumbles under it’s own weight and I can get back to work.

These are the solutions to writer’s block that work for me. I don’t have rituals, because they’re nonsense. I don’t switch to doing research, because that’s just another way to avoid actually writing, and does more to feed the block, rather than dispel it. Writer’s block, if it exists, must be countered with actual writing. Like kryptonite on that guy in the cape, it’s the only thing that can kill it.