Writer’s Block

Variations on a superstition.

WRITER’S block, I have always maintained, is not real. It is an invention. A selfinflicted wound. A chimera. After all, every time we fall asleep we write stories in our dreams. And yet whenever I give a talk to young writers, eventually a hand goes up with a question about the ubiquitous phenomenon of writer’s block and how to cure it. I think we must anatomize and rename the variations of this perceived ailment in order to deprive it of its power. Another, more apt, phrase is something like the studious avoidance of writing. To call this writer’s block would be like avoiding exercise and calling it “exercise block.” I have exercise block a lot. Almost every day. It’s a real shame, but what can I do? If I told my friends I had “exercise block” they might say, “You mean you are not exercising?” And I would have to agree. Perhaps if a friend claims to have writer’s block, you might say, “You mean you are not writing?”

I believe that common instances of writer’s block fall into one of thirteen categories. The first is the aforementioned avoidance of writing. The second is waiting to write. Sometimes we do not want to work on a poem, or a play, or a story for no other reason than we should not be working on it. We should be waiting until we know more; then the writing will come to us. Perhaps this means we need to mourn for a while before writing. Or live a bit more before writing. Or read a bit more before writing. This is a natural process, like gestation, and can’t be rushed or forced.

The third category I might call walking away from the canvas. We might choose to take a break from writing because we are too close to the material; we have to step away from the canvas, as a painter does every so often, to see how the painting looks from a distance. If we are avoiding writing, waiting to write, or taking a break from writing, the writer has some choice in the matter, whereas “writer’s block” sounds like a mystical illness or a gastrointestinal problem that suddenly comes upon us.

Sometimes when my students say they are having writer’s block, I ask them what landscape they prefer— water, mountains, or meadows—and I tell them to get on the first train to that landscape and to look at it for a day before trying to write again. Many writers find it curative.

The fourth, perhaps most awful, category is abandoning a piece of writing that is not meant to be written. This is a hard one, but occasionally a piece of writing is not worth being written and must be put aside. This is not mystical; it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is difficult to cope with. Not all seeds become trees.

The fifth category is not wanting to write the thing someone else is telling me to write, otherwise known as not wishing to implement the stupid notes on my writing someone else is giving me. This is a particular problem for writers-for-hire or graduate students and does not apply to the majority of writers. Regardless, this is not writer’s block either. This is revulsion, pure and simple. This is resistance to doing someone else’s bidding. At times one must simply swallow one’s revulsion and get it done. Or explain patiently to the person giving the notes that they are killing your soul and ruining your ability to write.

The sixth category is a person I love will be angry with me, or their feelings will be hurt if I write what I would like to write. This applies to a large swath of confessional memoirs, revenge plays, and poems about ex-lovers. In many cases this work should be given up anyway because, as Elizabeth Bishop once said, “Art just isn’t worth that much.” If the piece is worthwhile, however, one might get permission from the ex-lover, or mother, or grandfather before writing it. Or the writer might try a shift in intention, attempting to write from love rather than from derision, and see how quickly the writing comes. That requires forgiveness, and forgiveness often requires waiting.

The seventh, unfortunately very common, category is distracted by the modern world. If this sounds like you, turn your phone off or put it in the mail and send it to yourself. My dear friend the playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas gave me this idea. Before the era of smartphones he would put his modem in the mail and send it to himself when he wanted to avoid interruption; it usually took about a week for the modem to reach him again. If you find you are still distracted by the modern world while your phone is off or in the mail, you might need a more radical and ancient approach: meditation. Meditation is the equivalent of turning off your computer and finding that whatever bugs were in it are mysteriously gone when you turn it on again. My other personal cure for the modern world is riding the Amtrak “quiet car,” one of the only places in the modern world where “a library-like atmosphere must be maintained,” or so the conductor says. Truth be told, there isn’t even a library-like atmosphere at most libraries anymore.

I feel compelled to add an eighth category for those with children called distracted by my children. My prescription for this ailment is to write outside the house, or, if you are a man, to embark upon an epic Scandinavian best-seller about the way in which your children’s domestic needs engulf you. The other cure I’ve tried for this category is writing in short form. There is also a certain amount of waiting inherent in this cure—once the children go to school for six hours a day the problem naturally resolves itself, as one can really write for only two hours anyway (see the thirteenth category, general sloth).

The ninth category is the beginning was not really the beginning, the middle was not the middle, and the end was not the end. There are at least two routes for every destination, as I tell my thirteen-year-old daughter, who often knows only one way of walking somewhere. The same is true for writing. Sometimes we feel “blocked” because we started a story in the wrong place or ended in the wrong place. I find it very useful, when trying to remedy this condition, to take a few months off between writing the first and the second act of a play. A corollary to “the beginning was not really the beginning” is “there are too many plays in my play.” In this instance one will write new material only once one has cut off the offending extra material, which can be counterintuitive. It is like being bloated

and needing to fast before eating again. Number ten I might call the

Penelope syndrome. Remember how Homer’s Penelope wove and unraveled the same shroud, waiting for Odysseus to come home, in order to deceive her suitors? Some writers effectively unweave what they write as soon as they write it, leading to the false perception of writer’s block. Actually the writing itself is not blocked; there is quite a lot of writing happening, but it is being revised and erased before the ink is dry. Perfectionists are especially prone to this syndrome. I tell perfectionists, “Please do not erase your lines.”

Eleven: the who is looking over your shoulder while you are writing? syndrome. In this form of blockage there is an overly critical parent, lover, teacher, reviewer watching you write and waiting for you to write down something stupid. You might even think that the culture you find yourself in (the culture itself) is looking over your shoulder in a smug, critical way. Prescription: Do not look over your shoulder while writing. Write for yourself. Or think of a person you would like to give a gift to and write for that person. I think many forms of perceived writer’s block fall into this category, and because the fear of judgment is so painful and personal, we try to make it mystical.

Similar to the looking-over-yourshoulder phenomenon is being overly focused on the outcome syndrome.

You might call this watched-kettle syndrome, and I might also call it dogwalking syndrome. Have you ever taken a dog for a walk and the dog won’t pee? And for the whole walk you think: “Pee,

Pee, Pee!” And the more you think, “Pee!” or say, “Pee!” or scream, “Pee!” the less likely it is that the dog will pee? Rather than simply taking the dog for a walk and not paying attention to whether the dog pees, you are focused on an outcome during your whole walk, and so of course you do not find it.

The last category is general sloth. My prescriptions for sloth-disguised-aswriter’s-block are caffeine, walking, healthy habits, and sleep. Tea should be used for certain writerly modes, and coffee for others. I cannot tell you which because it is very personal, as is the choice in tea. Green tea is good for some temperaments and genres, but I find Yorkshire tea the best. Short walks with animals cure many writerly problems; long walks by the sea cure others.

Also, just as with exercise, do not

The seventh, unfortunately very common, category is distracted by the modern world.

overdo your daily writing habits in terms of duration. I don’t know many writers who can write more than two hours a day. If you try to write three hours a day and find you cannot, you might start perceiving that you have dreaded writer’s block when really you are only supposed to write two hours a day. Find out what time of day you are most awake and write then. Many mystics and meditators find that 4 AM is a time of bold inspiration—I myself find the boring interval between 10 AM and noon to be most fruitful. The wonderful writer Ann Patchett has a useful trick for sloth-induced writer’s block. In the title essay of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (Harper, 2013), she writes that when people complain they have writer’s block, they usually are simply not really trying to write. They are not going to their desk, sitting down, and spending time writing. So Patchett advises writers to sign in when they sit down at their desk, noting on a sign-in sheet how long they spent there, trying to write. When people do this, she says, eventually they do in fact write, as if by magic.

I’ve left off one category, which is dread of the desk. If you can’t stand the sight of your desk, clean it. Clean out every useless piece of paper, discard every book you meant to read but didn’t. If the dread persists, write at the kitchen table. If you are still feeling dread, you might also have fear of solitude, which is difficult but not insurmountable for a writer. Go to a coffee shop to write, and let the hum of voices around you remind you that the world still exists while you write. Or go to your local public library and write with a friend sitting across the table from you.

Sleep is the most wonderful cure for any kind of writer’s block, because of dreams, which remind us that stories make themselves up, if only we would let them. It is useful to have a place for sleep near one’s desk. I am serious about this; when a form of dropsy hits in the middle of writing, we should pay attention and heed the horizontal impulse. Often a dream will come that gives us the next sentence, or image, or event.

Finally, one must not confuse self-loathing or despair with writer’s block. Those are professional hazards, and there are other treatments for them. Don’t ignore them.

NOW, say you have tried everything. You have anatomized your ailment, you’ve signed in at your desk, you’ve tried tea, walking, waiting, forgiveness, the Amtrak quiet car, and nothing is working. Here are some last-resort ideas.

First, a change of place. The most radical version of which is: Go to a country where people are speaking a different language. This is sure to create the desire to write in your own language in an entirely new way. Obviously that cure requires time and means, so it’s not a very practical cure.

Similar to writing while listening to another language but not involving

a plane ticket: Try writing as though you are translating a great work that has already been written by a fictional writer of your own invention. You have discovered this masterwork under your bed and need only translate it. The end has already been found by someone else. I find this gives great relief to the dread of formlessness. If the form is already there, there is less room for anxiety.

An obsession with finding the perfect place to write can be indicative of a deeper dread. There is no perfect desk or view or chair. When I start fantasizing that if only I could write at Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House, I know that I am in trouble. Change is all. Simply go to a different coffee shop to write. A different library. A different place. Let the sounds of the new place teach you to hear differently as you write. Or change the genre. Write the poem as a story, the play as a poem, the essay as a song. Maybe you are writing your story in the wrong genre.

If change of genre or country does not work, try the water cure: A bath is usually readily available. Or a nice long swim. Many of the most disciplined writers I know swim every day. Or walk. Or dance. Find joy in your body. Writing is a terribly disembodied activity, and sometimes the body requires joy before writing.

There is also this simple remedy: Find other writers in the same pickle and create deadlines for one another. Sometimes all that is needed is a deadline and the fear of not meeting it. My friend the playwright Andy Bragen and I created punishments for each other in our early twenties if we did not meet the deadlines we had created for each other. You have not lived if you have not seen Andy do the Jane Fonda Workout in blue sweatpants in his East Village apartment—this was my chosen punishment for him if he failed to meet his deadline. The other benefit to this remedy is that you bat away perceived writer’s block and the professional hazard of loneliness in one fell swoop. And now, twenty years later, we have the pickle council—four playwright friends who meet regularly, share work, and discuss professional pickles. At first we ate pickles that Andy bought from the pickle man on the Lower East Side, now we mostly discuss pickles.

If you’ve tried all these remedies and, still, nothing is working, my last prescription is: Find a teacher. It was Paula Vogel who correctly diagnosed my inability to write after my father died—she knew that I was looking at the grief too directly. I needed to look at it sideways in order to write. Sometimes we need a teacher to see what we cannot see.

Superstition is common for writers and can be, I believe, quite useful. But “writer’s block” is an unhelpful, superstitious term made up by a psychiatrist named Edmund Bergler in the 1940s and has more to do with his views on “oral masochism” than with the writing life. As such, it should be frowned upon and relegated to the dustbin of literary history.