With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion!
I’m on the record saying writer’s block doesn’t exist, but woo boy did I get stuck at the height of the pandemic. I felt like I was moving through creative quicksand for an entire year and couldn’t for the life of me get any projects going, even though I badly wanted to. I felt completely paralyzed.
Ultimately, writing a short story unlocked something in my brain, the world unthawed a bit from its dormancy, and I got going on the middle grade novel that I finished this year. I still maintain that the only way out of writer’s block is through, but it was quite a test.
What was your worst bout of writers block and how did you end up getting unstuck?
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Art: A Quiet Day near Manchester by Alfred Thompson Bricher
Ongoing! Will be interested to read how others got through. I’m hoping an upcoming vacation will help….
Mine was awful, about a year or so in which I had no ideas, no impulse to write a story or a poem, absolutely bone dry. I thought the writing part of me was gone for good and I felt like I’d lost a vital piece of myself. Slowly, slowly, by reading a lot, and then after I joined what was, at the time, the Compuserve Books and Writers Community where, among other things, we had monthly writing exercises and lots of book chat, I started to feel the spark again. Such a *relief*! Since then, I’ve really tried to make it a habit to write every day, because (who’d’ve thought? :p ) it really works!
Being recently diagnosed with ADD at age sixty explains why I have experienced “writer’s block” all my life. Within me is a capacity to write very well, which has emerged often enough to make me wonder why writing is usually such a dismal chore. I am hopeful that new insight may help me work my way to a place, if not of perpetual flow, at least of an ability to get the work done.
I almost hate to say it because I know it’s very real for some people, but I’ve never had writer’s block. What I’ve had is a feeling that I don’t have time to sit down and write. I got a lot of help from a coach who once told me, “Write for 15 minutes a day. And if you can’t find 15 minutes, write one sentence.” Of course once I committed to 15 minutes, I was always able to find plenty of time. I simply had to prioritize writing.
Going through one right now. I went back to work after 8 years break yo look after my kids and I’m still trying to adjust and find a balance. Hopefully I will 😊
I’ve always been a pantser who let the alpha side of my brain take over and I did nothing but take dictation. But with age and antidepressants that part of my brain doesn’t function as it did. I can’t even daydream anymore. So lately I strain to get out a coherent sentence. I know it’s neurological but it’s flat out writer’s block. I hope no other writer ever has to experience this.
I started to think I wasn’t working on my novel because I no longer identify as a writer. (So, like, what am I?) Then I realized I’m writing in my head: I have to think of the ending first. I also worked this way when I was a newspaper features writer.