Do You Believe in Writer's Block?

Until this fall I'd never experienced writer's block. Oh, I've often spent vast amounts of time not writing. It's scarily easy to do if you allow yourself to think "I want to be a writer" or "I will be a writer someday" instead of "I am a writer." But being out of ideas or not writing isn't the same as writer's block. At least not as I'm using it.

Which of course begs the question, what do I mean by writer's block? Well, I'll tell you. First, several negative definitions: (1) Writer's block does not mean lacking any ideas to write about in the first place. (2) Writer's block does not mean being too lazy to write. (3) Writer's block does not mean scheduling yourself so full of other activities, jobs, priorities etc. that you are too tired, too stressed, or just plain too busy to write (first of all, I think you can always, always make time to write, unless for some reason you don't want to. This may not be true of every day, but it is true of at least 80-85% of the days in even the busiest schedule unless you have some other excuse that makes you not want to write). So, then pray tell, you must be asking, before you beat this horse to death, what exactly do you mean by writer's block?

Writer's block as I use the term refers to being stuck with a project already in  motion. It can happen early while the specific project you're working on is till in the pre-screen or pre-paper stage, seeming very similar to negative definition number one, but it is distinct from lacking ideas in that the writer has an idea, in fact may have many ideas, but can't make headway on the project, can't get from head to paper. Or it may strike later, hitting mid-project in the form of doubt over what to do next, or over the quality of the piece as a whole making proceeding seem either pointless (If you don't know where you're going, why write? You'll just make a mess! [This may be true, but how will you get going again if you don't make a mess and then work through it to get to the other side.]) or impossible (I can't write anything on this, the ideas just won't come. Whenever I sit down to do it, I just write crap and end up throwing it out and starting over!).

I've allowed myself to suffer the first one and am battling my excuses to avoid allowing myself to suffer the second. I've seen writer's who don't believe in writer's block. Who scoff at the idea: "Carpenters don't get carving block, doctors don't get surgical block, teachers don't get teaching block." They say. And they have a point. In fact it's true: Writer's block as an affliction that strikes whomever it pleases and lingers disease like until one either fights it off or it runs its course is total bull. Unlike disease, writer's block can only afflict us if we let it. The insidious thing about it is that it is so easy to let it.

I believe that these other professions don't speak about being blocked the way some artists (particularly writers) do is because they generally don't harbor the concept of the muse. Despite Einstein's argument for the importance of imagination (or was it the supremacy of imagination? I don't remember exactly) scientists don't sit around waiting for the right moment, or the right feeling to begin doing sciencey stuff. (don't mock me sciencey stuff is a very precise brand of stuff. I have it on very good authority.) While they may speak (often speak) of Eureka moments, you don't hear about them sitting all in a twist because they just can't experiment. Because they just can't seem to think of any new experiments to pursue. Or wondering if they're really scientists or if they're just fooling themselves. Or waiting for inspiration to strike before pursuing the question any further. They're not trying to be a conduit in the sense of sitting patiently for someone to turn on the flow of ideas, queries etc. And yet writers do this all the time. And the fact is, in creative endeavor (and in most/all work) it is possible to reach a state of flow where it feels like your hand is guided, where it feels like you're taking transcription from another plane rather than creating yourself. But not having that feeling is no excuse for not working.

Writing is hard. Sometimes its harder than others. Sometimes it feels like Sitting and thinking until little beads of blood form on your forehead. But not being easy is a trait all worthwhile work enjoys. The secret to writing(said so many times by so many writers that even Hollywood got it right in Finding Forrester) is to write. How many writers have said it? Great ones and hacks, talents and scabs--when the blank page is too much what do you do? You write anyway. When you have no ideas, what do you do? You write anyway. When you're stuck in the middle and unsure of how to proceed or you're convinced that everything you've written on this piece (and often simultaneously everything you've ever written) is rank, stinking garbage, what do you do? You write anyway.

You may push hard against a brick wall. You may write and re-write and re-write and re-write (although I suggest that while you will undoubtedly have to come back and edit/revise/clean up later you may be better served when stuck to turn off the censor as completely as possible and just press forward. You have to trust yourself to wade back into the swamp and make it less swampy once you're out, but if you don't press on and find they way out you'll drown in there) but you must keep going. I think that writer's block, as I define it is a writer beating himself or herself. When the writing is coming at a trickle, if it is still coming you're not blocked. And words will come, they always come. You can squeeze them out. The only way writer's block will set in, that is that you will get truly stuck mid-process, is if you allow yourself to quit when the writing becomes difficult. WRITING ISN'T EASY. WRITING WELL GOES WAY BEYOND NOT EASY. So if you're attempting to write and write well and you feel it must not be for you because it's so hard, well someone fed you a line somewhere about that flow stuff, and/or having experienced it yourself you've deluded yourself into thinking that's the way it always is. The solution is to write your way through your block. If you don't allow your fears (and a block is always fear at the root: fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of something...) to keep you from writing they can't block you. They may slow you down. You may struggle to say what you want, you may struggle even more to say it just right, but you won't get stuck you won't get blocked.

However, once you let fear get you away from the computer, the pad, the whatever-it-is-you-compose-on/in, then you can get blocked. You can allow yourself to get walled off from your project. This takes several forms--not writing at all. For some writers, the easiest thing of all when "blocked" (re: afraid) is not to write. Or rather, to not write. After all there are a million other things that will happily fill up our time. For other writers, the easiest thing in the world is to find little side projects, other outlets for writing that allow them to talk about how hard it is, or how blocked they are, or to just diddle away their time in relatively meaningless writing, scratching the itch but not producing, not advancing whatever the project is. You get your writing itch scratched, and find that with the itch scratched you don't have the gumption to face whatever fear you've allowed to drive you away from the project on which you are blocked.

I heard a distorted version of Heinlein's rules of writing a few weeks ago. After looking up what the internet provides as the "real" Heinlein rules, I prefer the ones I encountered. They've got a bit more attitude, and I'm looking for snark right now. They read as follows: 1. Apply butt to chair. 2. Write. 3. Submit for publication. 4. Repeat from number 1. I allowed myself to get chased away from my preface for my thesis repeatedly. I over-researched. I got started, saw it was hard because of the mountain of material I had to cover and backed off because the amount of work was scary. I read some theses that were shared with me, found the prefaces to be clearer than what I had produced, got scared and quit writing. I allowed myself to direct all my writing energy elsewhere and come to the page late at night and drained and wondered what was happening. I fell into every single trap that allows a writer to get scared and become blocked. And when I finally got going again, it's because i said, I'm going to sit and write this. It may be crap. It may be painful. but I am going to get this on paper because only once it's on paper can I begin workign with it to make it better. Even if that means throwing it out and starting again.

So if you get scared, write. And if you have no ideas, write. And if you don't feel like writing, write. And if you're afraid you're writing sucks, write. And if you're afraid that you're off task, write. And if you're afraid you're too busy, write. And if you want to write, if you want to publish, if you ever want to squish that damn fear and feel brave again, to get past it to the state of flow that lies somewhere in the great beyond, Write. Write, and write, and write, and keep writing and if there's some problem write more write extra. And if you don't feel like writing, if you're afraid of writing, if you're convinced it's all no good? Write even more than that and keep on going until all the fears, doubts etc. are washed away in a flood of your defiant verbiage. It may indeed be no good, cliched, trash. But it will be on paper. Hemingway tells us the first draft of anything is crap (well, he said it slightly more colorfully). We must be willing to be bad before we can be good. To be beginners before we can be masters. So if we feel great? We write. And if we feel crappy? We write. And if we believe? We write. And if today disbelief seems to have taken firm hold and made everything feel impossible? We write. We write. We write. We write. We write. Because no one can stop us. And we can only block ourselves. And, it follows then, that only we can unblock ourselves.

One last time. What do we do? We write.

Repurposing--Thoughts on the Bifurcated Self

I tend to want to segregate things that I care about/get excited about. That is, I tend to segregate my writing notebooks, wanting a different notebook for each project, or with books (of which I have way too many) I have several separate shelves, of varying genres etc. and each organized within itself in a fashion different from the others. This is a pattern I tend to follow through most (all? maybe not all) areas of my life. A further example: I was thinking the other day that I should get a different USB drive for each writing project that I am attempting and back up the material by saving it in its own folder, and then on its own USB and then within its own Google Docs folder. See? CWWWAAAAAAZZZYYYY.

In any case I have done just this with my blogs. I didn't want to delete my blogs, (well, not all of them) and so I figured I'd leave them where they were and repurpose them, adding the blogs I wanted (a random personal blog, and a new family blog, along with potentially two blogs based around some of my work at Peyton High School) at Tumblr, because it's really cool. And, increasingly popular. Still, I do have these blogs, each purposed for educational type stuff (having each originated with a course requirement in my Grad school program) and decided that they should persist as education/professional type bloggy thingies. There we go. That is evidence of education and professionalism right there, don't you think? ...yeah.

Anyway, This blog, Thoughts on Comp I want to maintain as a forum for venting about --I mean reflecting on my teaching--as a teacher who has voluntarily traded my high school's senior English British Lit course for a speech and composition course instead. I intend to be doing a lot of reading and hopefully some pretty thorough reflections on what works, what doesn't, what I'm reading on the subject (as I am a compulsive reader) and--yeah stuff like that. And it seemed that the already extant title "Thoughts on Comp" was fitting so there you go.