Writer’s Block

Writer’s block is an unpleasant experience that most writers have the misfortune of facing occasionally. For some, it is a momentary problem that comes on them like a head cold and may last no longer than a twenty-four hour virus. For others, it can be an affliction that plagues them for half their life, or a periodic illness that troubles them like seasonal allergies.

What exactly is writer’s block? Some might be tempted to think of it as simple laziness, a fancy expression writers cooked up to explain long periods of sitting about the house in their underwear while they watch soap operas for weeks on end. After all, do plumbers claim that they are blocked and can’t be expected to fix your drain pipes today? Do accountants suddenly find themselves blanking and unable to add that column of last month’s receipts?

Actually, no matter what your job, you’ll find that you probably are less capable and less good at your task during those times when you are ill, or when you are upset by personal problems, such as financial worries, sickness in the family, or death. Disasters do indeed get in the way of peak performance.

But given the nature of writing, which is an entirely mental activity, if your mind is distracted enough, the creativity may be wanting. Depression and anxiety can be devastating for productivity. The process of creativity is a tricky thing, after all, requiring a lot of odd mind games and psychological tricks, even during the best of times, even for those who are accustomed to sitting down every day at a specified time and putting pen to paper (or keyboard to screen). The nineteenth century novelist Anthony Trollope reported that he wrote from 5:30 to 8:30 every morning for years. He set as his goal the writing of two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes. This was what he did, day in and day out. And if he happened to finish a novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next. When 8:30 rolled around, he stopped, even if he was in the middle of a sentence and he went off to his other job with the postal service. Following this pattern, he managed to produce forty-nine novels over the course of thirty-five years. He recommended his habit to all writers: “Let their work be to them as is his common work to the common laborer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,—as men have sat, or said that they have sat.”

I am not a morning person, so I don’t get up so early, but I keep a similar regimen myself and have found it very helpful. I do a minimum 10 pages a day, five days a week, of first draft novel writing. I used to do this in the mornings, but I’ve found I’m more productive in the afternoons. Once I hit 10 pages in one novel, I stop, no matter where I am in the story. At the moment, since I’m working on two novels, I generally manage 20 pages per day.

For me, one way of keeping the tendency for writer’s block away has been to have several projects in the works at once. For instance, in addition to the two new novels I’m working on, I’m currently rewriting a historical novel based on the crucial battle at the Spring of Goliath in Palestine between the Mongols and the Mamluk Moslems in the 13th century. I also have a science fiction novel that I’m rewriting. On top of that, every week for the last eight years or so, I produce an 800 word newspaper column for a small, weekly newspaper up north.

Circumstances became radically not normal back in the winter of 1998, when the foster baby we were taking care of (the younger brother of my now adopted youngest daughter) died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I found that while I was still able to write nonfiction without much trouble, fiction became impossible to produce. The subsequent 31 million dollar lawsuit against my wife and me (and the County of Los Angeles) only made it worse and for the next three years I suffered the first, and so far worst, experience I’ve personally had with writer’s block. Trust me, writer’s block is not a fancy excuse for being lazy. It is a mundane term for something resembling severe constipation, only worse. In my case, writer’s block lasted for three years, until the lawsuit against us was dismissed. After that, I was able to write fiction again and managed to produce two novels within an eight month period.

Despite that, however, writing had become harder to do than it was before. But I forced myself to keep at it. Between 2007 and 2011 I wrote and had published four non-fiction books. But through the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, I was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate. I’ve been suffering from minor depression for years, to some extent a consequence of my allergies. Despite that, I’d always been able to concentrate and do productive work. But suddenly it was getting very difficult to do much more than stare at the wall. Increasingly, I was finding I couldn’t relax or enjoy anything, couldn’t concentrate, had trouble even reading.

A friend in the process of getting a degree in psychology had learned about something called dysthymia; one of her professors had suffered from it. She suggested that I should bring it up with my doctor. So I did. He prescribed a medication for me, the generic form of Wellbutrin. It has been remarkably effective. I’ve suffered no side effects from it, except recently some difficulty falling asleep at night. More importantly the medication has helped restore my fading ability to concentrate, and I find it much easier to enjoy myself. The negative self-talk that had dominated my mind most of my waking hours vanished. I feel so much better and I’ve been able to produce 20 pages of fiction every day for the past month, with little trouble.

Writer’s block can have many causes. Finding a way out can be hard. But suffering from it is a miserable thing. Writer’s write. If they can’t, they suffer like cows needing to be milked.