July 28, 2004
The Melodrama of Writer's Block
Here's an article that blithely accepts the idea of writer's block as an unavoidable component of being a writer:
A friend of mine called me last week, sobbing. She's had writer's block for several weeks, and the more she worries about it, the more entrenched the block becomes. Now she's at the point where she feels as if she's underwater, without enough breath to reach the surface.I can certainly understand that feeling. I've recently overcome a block of my own.
"Are you afraid you have nothing to say?" I asked. "Do you need to live a little? Maybe let things 'compost' a bit?"
This annoys me. As Yoda would say, write or don't write. If life is getting in the way, then don't worry about it. Who says you need to write every single day to continue calling yourself a writer? Although I don't understand how someone could have all these problems and not write about them—isn't the exploration of one's emotions and problems supposed to be one of the benefits of being a writer?—there are some things in life more important than regular literary output. Even worse, this person is worried about not having written in several weeks. How neurotic. Unless this is a professional writer dependent upon her output to live (which the article strongly implies is not the case) again I have to wonder what the problem is. Just because you're writing every day doesn't mean it's any good. The Romantic idea that the writer must wait passively for inspiration is a disease. Aren't writers supposed to be masters of the word? If you want to write, then write. Even if it turns out to be bad writing, at least you'll get some practice and perhaps some ideas about why that particular piece failed.
Over 20 years of writing, I've never experienced writer's block once. What I have experienced are 1) acute laziness accompanied by accute guilt and 2) waning interest in a particular project. I think that the latter could be interpreted as writer's block - in my several attempts at writing a novel, I've simply lost interest in them at a certain point and stopped writing, though these were in my much younger days. Although I do also have the first sixty pages of something I did over the summer, and I haven't touched it in about a month, so I don't guess things have changed much.
I agree with you completely. Writer's Block is a disease invented by writers to rationalize not writing while soliciting the sympathy of people who are not writers. That this "block" has not been universally maligned by writers is sad evidence of the fact that many lazy writers want to preserve this sorry excuse.
Man, that article is a goddamn atrocity. An article about writer's block by a self-important hack? Really helpful.
It really is. That's mainly what prompted me to blog it. Indignation makes for great inspiration.