Writer’s Block. I am not referencing THAT section of your neighborhood where authors and playwrights reside. Instead, I mean the painful dead-end of an idea. Writer’s Block is more than a bump in the road. It’s a serious road closure. The creative mind has decided to take a break. Called in sick. Took a vacation with no advance notice. There is a significant void that no temp can fill.
WB is a “creativity crisis”. Words are on quarantine. Ideas on house arrest. A.K.A. Lucidity Lockdown. Word distancing is in force, and it’s WAY more than six feet! Imagination has halted. Hit the skids. A once fertile mind is now, simply, a barren, broken brain.
When I fell out of bed last Monday morning I had “Writer’s Block” on my lips. They were the first two words my mind’s eye saw when the rooster crowed. Typically when my feet hit the floor early morn, the creative part of my brain has a twenty minute head start on the logical lobe. Instantly my cerebrum is flooded with a hodge-podge of ideas. A crazy traffic jam of word play. A Grand Central Station of quips, humor and witticisms that need to be sorted out, and the wrestling match begins. But not THIS day! I turned the key to fire up my imaginative engine and…dead battery. The silence was deafening. A noisy roar of nothingness. Tried it again. And again and again and again. STILL nothing!
Panic set in. I had heard about Writer’s Block, but thought it was a myth. Like Big Foot. Nessie. Mermaids. Yet Writer’s Block, if I had indeed caught it, seemed real. Felt like I was sitting at the longest red light ever at the intersection of Stuck & Frustration! Synapse interruptus. Creative thoughts no longer firing on all cylinders.
I “love” the comments of the well-intentioned: “Just do it!” If only it were that simple, I would lace up my Nikes, stretch a bit and hit the ground running. Or this one, “Just sit down and write!” That’s like telling someone who is constipated to just sit down and….well you get the idea. It takes time to work things out.
When Writer’s Block has set up camp in one’s cranium, this is what occurs: You write a few words, stare at it for thirty minutes searching for companion words to finish the sentence, then erase them as you realize you got nothing. Other times you type some words, wait, then add some more later, get up and walk around. You come back, re-read the sentence, then delete it cuz it doesn’t flow. Sometimes it takes a couple days to write one sentence. Other times you write a sentence in one sitting, stare at it for a while, edit it, and only accept it knowing you will change it later. Then reality hits you between the eyes. Writer’s Block IS the sentence!
I imagined being in a tiny jail cell with a handful of other forlorn souls also struggling with fingers not dancing on their keyboard. “How long you in for?”, I inquire. One guy said, “Twelve days and counting.” “Three months so far.”, a woman chimed in. The rest took turns answering, offering up a variety of time frames from weeks to many months. “One week.”, I said when asked that same question. Then a tired, sad voice uttered, “Ten years.” The owner of that voice was a grey-bearded man leaning forward, staring at the floor. “No way!”, I blurted out. “Ten whole years?!?” That terrible thought SNAPPED me back to reality!
“Wow!”, I said out loud. “I don’t want to end up like Grey Beard.” So I decided to see what Google had to say about Writer’s Block and here’s what I learned: WB is both real and a myth. A psychological and a physical challenge. There is an absence of inspiration and too much stuff to write about. And our brains are such complicated creatures. So much happens up there and still so much is unknown. Neurons, chemical blips, neurotransmitters, prefrontal cortex, limbic system…we are complexly wired to be sure!
Found an article that asserted WB is perfectly normal and EVERY writer will contend with Writer’s Block at some point. Although individuals will experience WB in different ways, all will share the uncomfortable inability to write. The article ended by encouraging the reader not to give up and offered an interesting challenge: “Try writing at a different location. Give your brain a change of scenery.”
“That makes sense.”, I thought. So I grabbed my laptop, found my Nike cap and pulled it down, snugly, over my forehead, confidently strode into the bathroom and sat down. “Writer’s Block”, I mumbled. “This, too, shall pass.”