I’m a creative writing student, and I hate the way we talk about writer’s block. I would rather not talk about it at all. It’s not in my vocabulary, because I don’t think it exists. At least not the way we think it does. I wouldn’t deny that sometimes writing is difficult, but there are much better lenses through which to perceive this experience. We’re writers, surely we’ve got a word more accurate than “block.”
We’ve all been there. You finally get a moment to yourself to sit down and work on that project that’s been on your mind. You collect your tools and instruments, prepare yourself however you do, and then nothing happens. The words in your mind won’t organize themselves into sentences, won’t attend to the task at hand, there’s just really nothing going on up there. Is this writer’s block? Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be.
What about what happens next? We start to tell ourselves stories. Think about the way that you speak to yourself when you sit down to write, and it doesn’t go the way you wanted it to. Do you tell yourself that something is wrong with you? Do you tell yourself that whatever you’re trying to accomplish is outside of your capabilities? Do you worry about whether or not you’ll be able to summon the words before a deadline? Do you feel like a fraud for considering yourself a writer in the first place? This is the understanding of writer’s block that I have encountered; that something is wrong with you, like a creative head cold.
Stop saying these things to yourself! Sitting around asking yourself what is wrong with me??? is never a good idea. I don’t have everything figured out, I’m still a student. but I’d like to offer a couple other ways of describing and understanding the experience of waiting for words that won’t come. These have helped me maintain faith in myself and avoid a little bit of the anguish and wringing of hands.
1
This is just a part of the process. There isn’t anything wrong. Humans aren’t machines. You can’t expect yourself to operate at 100% capacity all the time. It’s completely normal for your energy, inspiration, confidence, and general good spirits to fluctuate (and this goes for anything) from day to day or season to season. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything wrong, or that you deserve to give yourself any less kindness and understanding.
It’s not convenient or fun to sit in front of blank pages and wait. It invites self-doubt and fear, but it’s also an opportunity to learn and grow—just as much, if not more, than a day when delightful prose flows from your fingertips with ease, because it requires you to face discomfort. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in one of his famous Letters to a Young Poet:
“Why should you want to exclude any anxiety, any grief, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what it is that these conditions are accomplishing in you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where everything comes from and where it is headed?…. Do not scrutinize yourself too closely. Do not draw conclusions too quickly from that which is happening to you. Just allow it to happen.”
You don’t have to immediately fix yourself. That’s a lot of pressure. Writer’s block is an opportunity to observe your fears and insecurities, ask where they came from, make them your friends. Take writing as an opportunity to increase your tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity, both of which can be wielded as powerful tools in literary writing. This aspect of creativity deserves just as much celebration and attention as the experiences of clarity and flow.
You don’t have to be blocked. Perhaps you are simply called at that moment to do other work than you had planned for the day. As Rilke writes in another one of his letters:
“To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stand unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless.”
2
Maybe you’re tired. Have you been sleeping? Have you eaten? Is something weighing on your mind? When was the last time you spent time with a friend or family member? When was the last time you did something specifically on purpose to nurture your creativity? When was the last time you did something just for the hell of it?
You can’t pour from an empty cup. Writer’s block could be interpreted as a warning that you are running on empty Take it as an opportunity to rest and care for yourself. I will reiterate: humans aren’t machines. This perspective of writer’s block still considers it part of the process but suggests a different reaction. You are still not doing anything wrong, you are still not compromised as a writer, but maybe if the words aren’t coming it’s time to step away and check in with yourself.
When I am mentally or emotionally drained, I find it helpful to seek out experiences that have the possibility to strengthen my relationship with myself. Experiences that add interest, joy, and leisure to my life. I like to spend time with my friends, wander around outside without a destination, read things that haven’t been assigned to me, and draw ugly pictures. I consider the hours spent on long, aimless walks when I don’t feel excited about a project to be hours spent on the project, rather than hours spent in dereliction of my duty. Almost every time I leave my dorm and my uncooperative projects behind and go into the world with the explicit intent of enjoying it, I find something on the ground, or in the sky. An advertisement or the next chapter of a novel that reveals my soul in such a way that whatever problem I couldn’t solve on paper begins to unravel.
What will be restful and inspiring to me might not feel the same for you. Discovering what helps you recover is personal, but whatever it is, do it with gentleness and curiosity in your heart. If you are a person who struggles to let yourself relax, try to remember what captured your attention and delighted you when you were a young child. Before you started to worry about what other people thought of you, or even to notice that other people had thoughts about you at all, what were you drawn to? What did you feed your soul?
Rest is not optional. Needing to rest is not a sign that you are lazy or ill. You don’t have to do everything as hard as you possibly can all the time. Forgive yourself for being human and keep your cup full.
3
Another perspective is to look at writer’s block as a message. If you interpret it as a personal failing and judge yourself for it, you are both unnecessarily suffering and potentially overlooking creative direction from your subconscious mind.
John McNally’s Vivid and Continuous was assigned reading for my Intro to Fiction class at Susquehanna University, and the passage that made the greatest impact on me was this small aside in the chapter entitled Humility:
“I tend to think that whatever I’m working on—whether it’s a short story or a novel—is smarter than I am. It knows things I don’t. How is that possible? If you’re in that writing groove where words are simply appearing on the page, where characters and images are emerging that surprise even you as you’re writing them, then you’ve probably tapped into your unconscious mind, and unless you understand how your unconscious mind works, what lurks up there, and how all the disparate images and people in your story are connected, you may want to stand humbled in its presence. This is the story or novel talking to you.”
I still think about this idea whenever I write. I find it comforting. I don’t have to control my stories and make them behave. I’m not the authority, the story is.
The notion of the unconscious mind is a concept that has been explored in art, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology throughout human history. It is a theoretical part of your cognitive processes which are not within the field of your conscious awareness. It’s a metaphor. You don’t have to believe that an unknowable part of your mind is sending you secret messages if you don’t want to, but I find it helpful to apply the concept to the experience of writer’s block.
Standing humbled in the presence of my unconscious mind, for me, means following my intuition and trusting that whatever is happening with a piece of work is what needs to be happening, even if it’s not what I expected, or what I want. Regarding your own creative inspiration with respect and attentiveness can also be applied to a lack of creative inspiration. If you cannot write something, it’s possible that there’s nothing there to be written. It’s a sign from the writing itself that you’ve walked it down a dead end.
You don’t have to figure it out all by yourself. Listen to the writing. Ask it questions. Retrace your steps. What were you writing down the last time you felt excited and inspired? Where did you go from there? Can you go back to that moment and take the piece in a different direction? How does that change your feelings about the piece, and about yourself? You have no obligation to listen to the evil noises in your head that tell you you’re doing everything wrong. You have the option to, instead, accept the responsibility of making creative decisions in service of your creations, rather than your inner critic.
The most important message I want to leave you with is not to listen to me. I have no idea what’s going on. This essay is only a reflection of my experience as a writer, my opinions, and the reading I’ve done. Learn about yourself. Observe the thoughts in your mind and sensations in your body. Tell yourself your own story about writer’s block. I hope you will find a kind one that describes you as a scientist or a prophet, places power in your hands, takes weight off your shoulders, and offers you comfort and kindness. The last thing I will leave you with is another passage from Rilke’s Letters:
“You are so young; you stand before beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not look now for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything.”