The Writing Life: Writer’s Block Is For Sissies
Here is one fact I want you to take in: there is no such thing as writer’s block.
A writer is born with an endless imagination. Infinite possibilities exist. Everything’s been done a hundred zillion times, but authors find new ways to write about the same old stuff every day. Lord of the Flies becomes Hunger Games. Dracula becomes Edward Cullen. Writers block isn’t real, it’s an excuse, a convenient crutch. A way of explaining why you’re not writing. Why you’re not putting the time in. Why you stare at the computer and come up empty. Hey, I’ve got writers block. Jeez, that’s tough. Yeah, I wish I was writing but there it is, a case of writers block, like you’ve got a disease you have to recover from. So if writers block isn’t real, what is it? What’s going on? Why aren’t you able to write?
What most writers call writers block I call fear. Paralyzing fear of writing something that might not be any good. Fear that what you wrote last time was the only great thing you had. Fear that people will laugh. Fear that you will be told writing is not your thing. Fear that you will fail. Worst of all, fear you will just be mediocre. Fear paralyzes writers into a state of inaction, into believing they have lost their touch, their desire, their spark. This is a lie. The only thing stopping you from writing is the inner critic who shouts so loud it is all you can hear. No, don’t write, it might be bad! No, stay away from the computer, you might be laughed at! Don’t even look at what you’ve done, it’s all terrible! This is what the paralyzed writer hears every day.
When you can face your fear, stand up to your doubts, turn off your inner critic and accept we’re all mediocre at heart, even the greatest writers, and that the only way to rise above mediocrity is to let your words take shape without criticism choking them, then you can begin to give life to your inner writer. You must let your creative juices flow without being strangled by doubt, insecurity, and the cynic inside who is sure it’s not good enough. There is time for that in the editing process, but writing the book doesn’t need that, it needs fearless joy, like the kind of feeling you get when the top’s down on the convertible and you’re exceeding the speed limit, wind in your face. Fearless joy writing every word, not caring if they’re good, not caring if anyone is going to like it, not caring if someone will buy it, just busting out with joyful abandon as you find the heart of your character and let him roar with life. If you can face your fear of being less than, of being not good enough, of your writing being discovered for what it really is, a mediocre pile of crud, then you can stop trying to be so important and just have fun. Write from your gut. Laugh at yourself. Let your character sing off key in the shower. I’m not saying that mediocre writing will sell, I’m saying when its newly formed, it’s rough and raw, its plastic to be molded. If you just let it out, without judging it, the chances are with disciplined editing you can turn it into something truly unique and polished.
A note of caution: don’t confuse writer’s block with burnout. If you’ve just finished a novel, you absolutely must recharge your batteries. You have to let things rest in between books. You cannot write every day and never take the time to fertilize the ground, to let your brain rest and be fallow, to do other things, read other author’s books, refresh your energy and then come back for the next one.
So if you feel you are suffering from writers block, take heart. There is a cure. It involves doing the very thing you believe you can’t: writing. You must write the most painful words, the most awful sentences, the most poorly constructed paragraph, the most awful chapter you have ever seen! Now that that’s over, do it again, write the next page, and each page you write will be less painful than the one before until writers block is a thing of the past. Write through the pain, write through the fear, and one day, a manuscript will be sitting in your inbox.
Keep writing!
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