Challenges Faced by Writers

Writer's Block

by Elaine Carnegie

Welcome Back! I hope you enjoy this week's experience of mine with writer's block.

Writer’s Block.

I wasn’t certain for many years that I even believed in the reality of writer’s block! In my experience up to a point, I had never had anything stop me from writing whatever I wanted to write whenever I chose to sit down and hammer out the words of my muse.

Then one day, much like any other… I sat down to write and everything I managed to get onto the page, I deleted. It was all crap! I was on a deadline and a very important one for a serialized television series. It was nonfiction, I worked the case and knew it inside out, but I couldn’t put it on the page in a meaningful way. The words seemed cartoonish and shallow to me.

I never thought of writer’s block when it was happening that morning. I went to the river, and had a picnic beside those frigid blue waters. I took a drive through the hills and visited my dad’s grave. Basically, I just took the day off and that night I tried again, and it was worse than the morning had been. Ultimately, I missed the deadline but managed to rewrite an old article I had published a few years before that they accepted.

I was slow in realizing I had a real problem and when I did, I researched it like I do everything else. I searched Google, Why can’t I write? The answer was serious enough to scare the hell out of you. (I mean me)

Writer’s block, of course. Defined as a creative block, anxiety about writing, lack of motivation or distractions. Fear of failure, perfectionism, frustration, self-doubt, and even cognitive factors. All the advice said it's important to identify the underlying cause to find the best way to overcome it. Whoa! I didn’t think I had any of those things.

So, I searched writer’s block. “Writer’s block is common. During which a writer will suffer difficulty articulating ideas.” Well, I certainly had that!

Next it was “not a diagnosable mental health condition, but can be related to symptoms of anxiety.” This is where I began to freak out a little. “Rates of mood disorder are extremely high in the writers; 80% have some type of mood disorder, and 30% have either bipolar I or bipolar II disorder. Both these rates are significantly different from the control subjects. The writers also had higher rates of alcohol abuse than the controls.” National Library of Medicine by Nancy C Andreasen. I didn’t think I fit that mold either.

It continued: “Writer's block, feared by many writers, refers to a condition wherein an individual is unable to produce new work or experiences a significant slowdown in their creative output. This condition can be temporary or persist for years.”

YEARS… it said!😨

I quit searching… The frustration I had been feeling was quickly being replaced by some incomprehensible fear. So, next, I looked up famous writers who suffered from writer’s block.

The search information told me F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of "The Great Gatsby," faced a prolonged period of creative paralysis. J. K. Rowling encountered writer's block, Steven King and other recognizable names. Ernest Hemingway often battled with writer's block and would sometimes spend hours crafting a single sentence. When Ray Bradbury became blocked, he took it as a sign of being on the wrong track. “You’re being warned, aren’t you? Your subconscious is saying ‘You’re writing about things I don’t give a damn for.’” The cure for writer’s block is to “[stop] whatever you’re writing and [do] something else.”

This advice was echoed by Orson Scott Card. “I have never found ‘writer’s block’ to be wrong,” he said. “Whenever I’m stopped on a project, it’s because I was doing something false or weak, and when I get it right, it becomes more powerful and true.”

I began to feel a little more comfortable. Those reasons made sense to me. I began to write whatever came to mind if I couldn’t get work done on an actual project.

One morning I wrote:

Too Much to Say...

With blank sheet of paper and writing pen, I sat down today,

I had too much upon my mind and much too much to say.

I thought of tossing in my bed the whole long night before,

And how it felt to pace and think and then to pace some more…

I tried to write the heartfelt verse that normally write themselves,

But the words just would not come today, elusive tiny elves,

Upon a tree leaf in my mind, drifting ever down,

Chattering upon the wind until they reached the ground.

Jumbled in my mind and heart the words teased at my pen,

Until I tried to write them down and then they fled again…

So finally, I decided, to write what came to me

It isn’t much and what it means, is totally lost to me.

But here it is… the experience, that I had this day

When I sat down to write once more… with much too much to say!

It got a little easier and a little easier as I forgot about writer’s block and just wrote something every day until one day I realized I had been writing “good stuff” all day long.

I still don’t know why it came or why it left, but I am quite sure pushing through it and writing everyday was the cure. Sometimes I am my own worst enemy and I get too much into my head.

I think what I learned about writer’s block if it can help anyone is that it is an intensely personal experience. It does not discriminate among emerging or established writers. I think writer’s block is a real experience for creative people, but I also think it comes down to being dedicated to fill that terrifying empty page… no matter what!

I hope you enjoyed today’s article, there are three more in this series. See you soon!