Life Block vs. Writers Block

People often ask me about Writer’s Block and I am one of those annoying people who doesn’t believe in it. That is, I don’t believe that you stop being able to write because the book is too hard to write or because you have lost anything to say. I feel strongly that there is Life Block, however, and that people often mistake Life Block for Writer’s Block.

If you are stuck in your manuscript and you don’t know where the story goes next, I always say that you should go back to the beginning because most likely you have gone off the rails somewhere and once you figure out where that is, you won’t have any problem writing. But you do have to be willing to throw out all of the pages you wrote after that point. Alternatively, I sometimes think that writers start a project that they don’t love and it can be almost impossible to keep writing in that state. If this is your problem, I would say you need to work on something else, not that you have Writer’s Block and can’t write anything.

But if you have Life Block, this is more serious. Life Block can’t be solved by rereading the manuscript because it isn’t about the manuscript at all. There are some writers who honestly go deeper into their writing and do better when they are dealing with horrible life circumstances, but I think there are very few of them. If you are dealing with the loss of a loved one, with a terrible diagnosis, with simply too many demands from people you could not in good conscience say no to, then I would say you have Life Block. The answer to problems with Life Block is to deal with life, not with writing.

If you desperately need to write a few lines a day to keep sane, then do that. But do it without expectations and without recriminations. There is nothing bad about you if you let go of writing for a while to deal with real life problems. Yes, some people get more of these than others. Yes, it is completely unfair. No, I have no idea why this happens. I’m planning some long conversations with God in the after-life about this.

My point is, don’t call Life Block Writer’s Block because it will make you insane thinking that you should just keep plowing forward no matter how impossible it is. A friend of mine was dealing with a flood in her house and a deadline and she was going crazy. This is Life Block. The answer is you call up your editor and say you need a deadline extension. If you end up being on bed rest during a pregnancy, or if your mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and moves in with you, or your child is going through depression, writing will necessarily take second place to these other problems.

Yes, you can try to keep working through them. I know that writing is a job to some people and real life problems do not mean that everyone can take time off. But the reality of writing as a profession is that you can’t phone it in the way I think that people in other jobs can. You can’t just go on autopilot. You need your full heart and mind in it to get the work done, and I don’t think you can do that when your heart and mind are given fully to something else.