I didn’t believe in writer’s block until I smacked right into it.
Previous to this, I didn’t think it was something that could ever affect me. Writers block seemed like something glamourous, almost self-indulgent. It didn’t seem like something that could affect an amateur. No, the writer’s block was the purview of the professional, folks who could sit at typewriters in quiet rooms and smoke and frown and wait for the muse to return.
I didn’t believe in muses either, truth be told. What I believed in was discipline. I didn’t have the opportunity to sit and fret and let the precious minutes tick past. My chances to write were already so limited by the wretched necessity of everyday life and a job and a commute. How miserable, to need food when I wanted to edit!
As each creative process is different, I believe each writer’s block is different and unique to the creator. Mine was no true block, hard and obvious and unyielding. My block was like dark water, quiet and warm, seeping slowly upwards until I was entirely subsumed.
I didn’t write for two months.
None of the usual tricks worked. Going back to reread and edit previous work yielded nothing. Forcing myself to sit in front of an empty page resulted in an empty page. Even trying to journal was useless. All the words had dripped out of me. And they had taken with them something less tangible, my coherency. I couldn’t edit, I couldn’t structure or outline new plots. I even had trouble speaking.
Writer’s Block, Reader’s Solution (?)
What I could do, however, was read. And reading was something I had been struggling with for years. As a child and teenager I read voraciously, but something about adulthood knocked that out of me. The lack of time, perhaps. But when the block consumed me, took away my words, it left a space. And into that space came that old hunger for reading. I devoured everything, poetry and romance and non-fiction, scientific papers and lifestyle blogs and heavy literary works.
Perhaps block is truly the wrong word. Perhaps cocoon would be more accurate. A caterpillar feasts on everything around them before their transformation, eating with a single-minded devotion. So too did I in the depths of the block, while the keyboard gathered dust.
There has been a movement in creative advice of late that accepts fallow periods as a natural part of the creative process, and eschews the narrative of the grind and working through burnout. It feels kinder, more sustainable, as well as a rebuke to the capitalistic pressures of constant productivity.
And it does seem to work for the better, in my experience. Discipline got me completed manuscripts, but writer’s block gave me the opportunity to rest, flourish, and start to write anew.
Yours,
Elmswood. <3
