Goodreads asked Matt Wingett:

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Matt Wingett A lot of people in the writing profession talk about writer's block without knowing what it is. Adele Parks once told me at a seminar that there was no such thing as writer's block. Other people say they can't get an idea today or can't be bothered to write. Neither of these things is writer's block.

Regarding Adele Parks, one can understand her attitude. This is a woman who before she became a writer, was a high-powered executive in an international corporation, with responsibility for much of Asia. She is just psychologically not prone to the kinds of problems that cause writer's block - debilitating self doubt and introspection. She has a personality that's immune to it. Good luck to her. But it's bloody rude to say it doesn't exist.

Part of her response to complaints of writer's block come from, I suspect, impatience with those people who claim they get writer's block when they simply haven't got their heads together that morning. They can be like the people who say "I'm depressed" when they mean they're feeling a bit out of sorts.

So let me tell you about my experience of writer's block. In my 20s I wrote episode of The Bill in the summer breaks between going to university. I had a fair amount of expendable income, and I lived unwisely. I got mixed up with a lot of women I shouldn't have, and was generally irresponsible and a bit of an idiot. Yet, I was a good writer.

Then, one day, I fell in love with someone I shouldn't have. She was a games player, loved the idea of being in power in a relationship and was deeply jealous of my young success. She took it upon herself to wreck my belief in my writing. She tore it to pieces, during a blazing row.

In that one moment, the seeds of writer's block were planted. Long after we had split up, every time I put pen to paper her criticisms came to me. I simply was not good enough. Nothing I wrote was good enough. I couldn't write a sentence without tearing it to pieces. I grew increasingly depressed.

That writer's block lasted for 13 years.

Eventually, at the age of 40, I attended a seminar with stage hypnotist and self-help writer Paul McKenna, and told him about my writer's block. He took me on stage to demonstrate a hypnotic technique, and it changed everything. 13 years of pain, self doubt and misery were dispelled in a 20 minute sitting.

These days, I am much more aware of my emotions and how I think than I used to be. I notice if I am having doubts. I am more protective against criticism. I am also more mature, and know I can get out of these problems.

Meditation, hypnosis, visualisation, a change of scene, all of these things help me when I am flat out of ideas. But being flat out of ideas is NOT writer's block. That has been dealt with, and is not coming back.

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