The Myth of Writer's Block

and the importance of shutting the fuck up

If you have the displeasure of publicly identifying yourself as a writer, you will quickly learn that there are very few material struggles that come with the title. The toils of writing are embarassing and useless — a writer does not exhaust themselves by performing an emergency tracheotomy or helping low-income people get a voter ID or loading other people’s garbage into the back of trucks. We think ourselves into misery, and the “tortured” writer is an extremely convenient idea for the most self-aggrandizing amongst us. Actually, all of the things that make this process so hard are in fact just out of view, unknowable and therefore larger and more oppressive than the challenges of other disciplines… Many writers enjoy feeling tortured and frequently create environments where they feel horrible so that they may imagine themselves more productive and prophetic under pressure. And in every interview, of course, the question about the writer’s one true enemy arrives: how do you get out of writer’s block?

I have hung my head over the side of the bed, walked around the block while listening to music, walked around the block while not listening to anything, stared at the wall and the ceiling, doodled with a pen, doodled with a crayon to encourage my “inner child,” smelled the peel of an orange, turned on a YouTube yoga video and performed along, turned on a YouTube yoga video and sat my ass down and watched it like a television show, smoked a cigarette, made a coffee, let the milk in the coffee curdle, let the cigarette burn out in the ashtray, all while hoping and coaxing myself towards the moment where I may feel inspired to write something good. If you go looking, you’ll find people with “the secrets.” Especially in the Substack universe, increasingly overtaken by Tweet-like notes and hacky posts promising easy tricks to “growth,” I’m sure that there are hundreds out there who promise a simple solution to the torture of staring at the blank document, hoping it may turn itself into a gun and shoot you dead.

Almost everything about the concept of “writer’s block” irritates me. The supposed greatest obstacle to success or productivity is structured so passively you’d think it was written by the New York Times trying to describe civilian death. “Writer’s block.” What exactly is being blocked and by whom? The process of writing — not writing well, just writing in general — is so obscenely easy that, to save ourselves embarrassment, we assign blame to some undefined, mystical force. I have “writer’s block,” we say, as if we’ve come down with a terrible cold or bodily affliction. I have “writer’s block,” we say, as if it’s a hospice pet we keep out of noble duty.

I have never found this idea to be useful or true for me in my own practice. The truth is that I can always write something. I compose texts and tweets and direct messages and emails and all sorts of things, and I find myself to be perfectly capable of doing that any day of the week. Can I always write something good? Absolutely not.

There’s a certain entitlement in the “writer’s block” concept. God help me, some immovable object has come to stand in between me and my unstoppable force of creative genius. If only this hulking disgrace could move out of the way, then I could easily access my greatest ideas, which flow to me like a constant river of divine inspiration. I’m sorry, but I don’t think the block is to blame. Sometimes you will have genuinely good, thoughtful things to say and will find it easy to transmit them to words. Sometimes you won’t.

I think of the moon, which waxes and wanes on a regular cycle. While I’ve mostly abandoned my hard-headed faith in things like astrology or tarot, the moon remains literally real — a true example of fluidity within structure whose habits I consult often when I feel lost. The moon tells me that there is a time to add and create, to build upon previous foundation, to get as large and as full as possible. Equally important is the time to shed, to discern, to make things smaller, to clear out space before we can build again. Your mind is a closet — sometimes, instead of buying the new shirt, you really need to be going through the sock drawer.

It is not at all surprising to me that the “writer’s block” concept has become embraced both within the writing community and without. In our capitalist world, it’s seen as truly strange and defective should someone be unable to produce at a “normal” rate. But when we look closer, why is it so horrifying that one should not find it easy to create all the time?

When I find it difficult to write, I simply don’t. I read instead. I watch live music and old films on sketchy links and try to take in more than I put out. I accept that I am waning, not waxing.

This, of course, works for me in particular and it may not for you. I am not on deadlines for publication or under contract to anyone. I can understand the urgency to get back on the saddle as quickly as possible if this is not the case for you. But this urgency comes from something outside of the practice, something imposed upon the creative process for capitalist efficiency’s sake. And again, I think timely journalism is important. I think the world would probably go to shit if we all just sat around waiting for inspiration to strike. But this is the problem — nothing is as passive as we’ve been describing it, inspiration does not “strike,” it’s discovered.

You won’t always be writing well, and it’s not because there’s something wrong with you. Accept the fact that sometimes you will have horrible ideas, ideas that will make you doubt your own intellectual capacity, ideas that you should write down and put away if only just to get them out. Look to other people who find it easy to create right now and check in on what they’re putting out. When we stop talking, we can listen better, and when we listen better we will find something to talk about again. It’s genuinely okay and extremely healthy to have long periods of shutting the fuck up.

And if you’re feeling blocked, it’s time to get out of your own way.