Writer's Block

Holy Moly am I suffering from the worst case of writer’s block I can remember. I sit to write stories, they die on me. I sit to write blog entries, they die on me. I sit to write e-mails, nothing doing. Nothing comes out, and when something does it feels like the crappiest crap that’s ever been put down to type. Writer’s block, like editing, is a son of a bitch.

It makes you want to punch things.

But usually it’s not really anything more than a total psych out. Don’t get me wrong, it is a real doozy of a psych out, but most of the time it’s still just head games. And we’re playing with ourselves. And I’ve been thinking about why. I guess I think there are three reasons, and I’ll list them in the order of likelihood from least to greatest.

1) You actually don’t have anything to write. This makes up about 1% of cases of writer’s block, by my estimation. Your imagination is always working, and it always wants to do something. Given the chance, it will take advantage about 99% of the time. The other 1% is probably a good time for a nap.

2) You’re scared. I talked about fear before and it’s a real problem for writers. Even real, popular ones. You get scared. You get scared that you’ve already written the best parts of something, that you’ll make the wrong choice with character x, that if you finish you’ll have to show it to somebody. You’re scared about something, and it makes you hesitate at some point during the process. It would be easy for me to blame block primarily on fear, but I think that fails to give credit to a bigger problem. Fear is probably about 39% of cases, I’d think.

3) You’re self-critical. Every author is self critical. You’re your own worst critic, and that critic is your own worst enemy. And I’m not talking about being critical of your own talent, or critical of what you think you’re going to write. That’s fear. What I’m talking about is actually looking at the words you have written and being disgusted by them. Starting a story with a few sentences, paragraphs even, and dumping the whole thing because reading it over you feel like it was written by a hack. This is what’s been getting me, and according to my math about 60% of other cases out there.

But it stops you. It stops you to read your own words and think “this is bad.” I must have gone through five stories and three blogs last week because I felt like a hack reading it. During stretches like that I forget that nobody is more critical of my words than I am. I forget that I’m only writing a first draft. I forget that if I just keep writing, no matter how bad the beginning is, my imagination will get over it and do some really good things a few pages later.

I forgot all that. I’m starting to remember. Just write. Then rewrite. Every story looks like crap the first time around. I have to keep that in mind.