Do you believe in writer’s block? Have you experienced it and if so, how do you get over the hump?
I do and I don’t. Let me explain.
I not only believe in but have experienced that paralyzing feeling when you’re sitting in front of a blank screen and you want to write, but you can’t. It’s not that you have nothing to say– you do– but something, some undefinable, invisible hand stops you from doing so.
That something is usually fear.
Fear of something. Success, failure, your mother reading that sex scene, an ex finding himself written about in an unflattering manner, the high school teacher whose voice reverberates in your head every time you sit down to do something productive, that says you’ll never amount to anything.
So yes, I have been in that spot where I want to write but can’t. I find myself frequently there when I’m trying to write my novel and for me, it’s a fear of not being good enough. Even before I’ve put down a word, I’ve convinced myself that I’m incapable of writing a good scene.
I don’t call it writer’s block, but you can call it what you want. If I haven’t written anything in three months, you could certainly say I have writer’s block, but I think I have fear, laziness, cowardice, or any number of other things that probably fall under that general umbrella.
There are two ways that I get over my blocks.
One, I just write through them. It’s hard, no doubt. Wait, that’s an understatement. It’s like pulling water from a rock. Or worse. But I just sit there day after day and write the most random crap that pops up in my mind if only to assure myself that I’m putting words on the page. It’s not productive and sometimes it makes the block worse (especially if you’re already having a crisis of confidence), but other times it works.
And two, I figure out what it is that is holding me back. As I wrote on the blog recently, I found that I was constantly procrastinating on an assignment, that every time I sat down to write it, the words didn’t flow and it felt like far too much effort even though the assignments were easy and the editors good to me. I had simply outgrown the work and was thoroughly bored with it, which is where my block was coming from. It was resistence, not blockage. The words were flowing freely elsewhere; they just weren’t flowing on these particular assignments. And the moment I let them go, I was back to my old productive self.
So my advice to you is that if you find that something in you is resisting the writing, go easy on yourself and try to understand where the resistance or the block is coming from. Once you’ve figured it out, it’s time to beat that fear, lack of confidence, or whatever else is standing in your way, down with a stick and show up, each and every day, at the page. You know what they say about faking it till you make it? Fake it. Pretend like you’re a New York Times bestselling author working on your next bestseller and you’re just working your way through the pieces of the puzzle.
I’ve been faking it each and every day on my novel. I show up and I pretend to write. I might add a word, a sentence, re-read something, edit, but I spend that one hour playing about with it each and every day. And you know what? Last week, my resistant self started writing again, to the tune of 4,000 new words (yay!). So just keep at it. That’s the only way I know to beat the block or whatever else anyone may call it.