My Year of Writer’s Block
And What I’m Doing to Overcome It
It’s been at least a year that I’ve been dealing with writer’s block. The key phrasing here is at least. I think it might be longer but I know for a fact it’s been a year to date. Now before we move any further with this essay, thinkpiece, op-ed, or whatever you want to call it, we should understand what it actually means to have “writer’s block”. I feel most people believe writer’s block is the physical inability to write. That can be part of it but it’s not the ethos of the issue.
Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. This loss of ability to write and produce new work is not a result of commitment problems or the lack of writing skills.[1] The condition ranges from difficulty in coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Writer’s block is not solely measured by time passing without writing. It is measured by time passing without productivity in the task at hand.[1]
Productivity — that’s the smoking gun. For a considerable amount of time, the thought of writer’s block ceased to exist due to my lack of understanding about my productivity. In other words, I often felt that all the outlines, treatments, and ideas scribbled from margin to margin in my notebooks constituted productivity. They did not (well, mostly).
Yes, being able to put words to the page is something we should dedicate to on a regular basis (preferably daily) but also, getting into a cycle of glorified notetaking with no end product can lead to slipping into the endless void that is writer’s block.
It took maybe about 7–8 months before I started to feel the mental effects of writer’s block. A creeping, lingering feeling of inadequacy that I couldn’t quite explain or trace to a singular “thing”. In many cases, I tricked myself to thinking I was over-thinking.
Look at all these notebooks filled to the brims with your ideas. Shit, you even got several pages of a synopsis here, an opening chapter there. You’re being dramatic and putting to much pressure on yourself.
The reality is that deep down, I knew I was failing myself. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have 10 ideas scrawled across several pages, but at the very least a couple of those ideas would come to fruition in a first draft. Approaching a year into this lack of productivity, I had zero fucking drafts from dozens of ideas that I had piled up.
No matter the mental gymnastics, numbers don’t lie, and having a goose egg for a stat at the end of a 12-month cycle was not something I could dismiss. I have writer’s block and not knowing how long it will last terrifies me.
Being honest with myself has been the first step in overcoming this issue. I think us writers have a destructive and ass-backward attitude when it comes to writer’s block. Often the consensus is split — it’s all mental, overblown, and exaggerated, or it exists but “real writers” can resist and overcome it.
There’s also the perception that if you’re writing every day then you’re defeating writer’s block. Again, that’s not how writer’s block works. After all, I’ve have written almost every day but it’s the lack of results and the pressure to produce results that have crushed my collarbone to sawdust.
That has been the most distinct feature of this whole ordeal — overbearing stress that is foreign to me. Whenever I sit to write, there’s always a sense of stress or pressure, but it always felt natural and expected. The stress and pressure from writer’s block can feel alien or like my small intestine is caught in a vice that’s tightening by the millisecond.
So what can I do to “fix this”? The simple answer is to produce results. Sit my ass down and produce the first draft of anything. But again, if I could do that, I wouldn’t be in this waking nightmare. A writer’s catch-22.
After what felt like weeks of a mental tug-of-war, Occam’s razor cut the noose of my struggle — I realized I must redefine what constitutes a “result” and even be willing to lower my standards, if even for a brief period.
“If you have writer’s block, write about having writer’s block, and you will no longer have it.”
― Bashar
Two things I am doing right now to overcome this obstacle — restructuring my writing process and changing my approach to writing commitments.
My writing process often involves a lot of pen and paper writing before I fire up the laptop. I’m still doing that, but now I’m also making a more conscious effort to skip the pen and paper and go straight to the laptop. My hypothesis is if I take that pen and paper energy and re-distribute it to laptop writing, it will lend itself to the early stages of a first draft sooner rather than later.
Inclusive to this, reformatting the idea of productivity and what will constitute a meaningful result in my writing was important. This article is one of those results. It may not be as insightful or well-received as my previous ones but goddammit it’s a first draft.
As far as my approach to commitments, I started involving other individuals.
For example, I just finished a first draft of a pilot script with my friend. He did 80% of the writing and I had to be humble enough to accept my lack of contribution. Regardless, I was heavily involved throughout the entire process. We outlined everything together, had lengthy discussions about our ideas, and developed lots of notes as each page was written. Another course of action I took was making a personal commitment to actor friends to write and shoot a short film.
Making commitments to other individuals who will hold me accountable obligates me to smash through any creative wall in my way. Shortly after this commitment, I powered my way to a final draft of a story that had been marinating my brain for more than a year. If I can’t hold myself accountable, I’ll ask for help from those who will.
So how are things going right now? I’m still working through the writer’s block. Obviously, my productivity is up but it’s a far cry from my usual standard — in 2018 I wrote five screenplays (first drafts), several short stories, and the first draft of a novel. Since that time frame, I only wrote two screenplays and two short stories, much of which was a painful process (confidence-wise).
I’m wiping the slate clean from this point on. That’s the next approach I’m implementing in this clusterfuck. I’m going to stop living in the past of underwhelming results and accept my current reality. I also, at some point, will check my ego and be okay with other types of results that I normally would have felt I was “above”.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find my rhythm soon, and hopefully, for anyone dealing with writer’s block, this post helped you in some way.
