There's no such thing as writer's block
And, adjacently, more podcast suggestions
One of my favourite, all-time quotes comes from Brene Brown, when she was a guest on Elizabeth Gilbert’s podcast (link below) in 2016. And it goes like this:
Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgement, sorrow, shame. We have to find a way to create, and not care what others think. There is always someone better at everything we could do in life. That usually doesn't stop us from cooking, exercise, work, raising kids, etc. But it sure can kill our creativity.
This powerful collection of words unlocked two realizations in me. First, that feelings I sometimes experienced didn’t have anything to do with what my mother said, my single status or how I was underestimated at work. That as soon as I got back to writing and reading, those feelings of shame or sorrow or grief disappeared. And that if I wrote and read consistently every day, I was happier and better able to manage ornery mothers, fickle suitors and petty colleagues.
Second, it confirmed my belief that there’s no such thing as writer’s block.
The notion of writer’s block is based on expectations. And expectations are the enemy of good writing. If you have writer’s block, you are assuming that creativity should reliably deliver every day, in the exact same way, and during the specific hours that you’ve set aside for writing.
You are also ignoring the fact that creativity must be fed and renewed, and that periods spent reading or cooking or admiring pretty things are part of the writing process too.
Creativity is a cycle and you have to respect whatever ebb or flow you’re in.
When the words don’t come, I assume that I might be at the collecting or composting stage. Or that it’s time to revise or clean up formatting instead. I try not to judge or shame myself for not writing at 8:05 on Tuesday morning. I don’t panic either. I just pivot to other activities and trust that the words will reappear at 7PM or maybe tomorrow or probably the day after that.
And the words always do come again.
More interesting still, sometimes the words aren’t flowing because the dialogue is stilted or a character isn’t behaving as they should. The writing has stopped because something foundational needs to be realigned before I can move forward.
Saying you have writer’s block is imposing unnecessary expectations on yourself. It’s an easy thing to do because we live in productivity culture. I am busy, therefore I am. Many of us are also perpetually trapped in the I am not enough narrative. Our ability to produce—relentlessly, ever faster and ever bigger—has been linked to how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others. Fears and doubts are going to come up. But if you want to have a healthy and satisfying writing practice, you have to find a compassionate way to deal with (and move past) the messy parts.
This belief was further confirmed for me when I listened to a recent episode of the ‘We Can Do Hard Things” podcast (link below) featuring Roxane Gay. At one point, she articulates the fear of, “what if this is the last thing I write?'“ This is the language of the inner critic, of stifling expectation. We have all experienced that moment when an unwarranted fear brings everything to a halt. Gay describes it as “being dismantled before I even finish building the thing”.
But she quickly rebounds, “I would write… whether or not there was an audience or an interest in my work”. This is Gay finding a way to create, and not caring what others think. She attributes some of this to being the child of immigrant parents, of having inherited their “striving ethos”, but it’s mostly a writer who understands that if you love writing, you have to keep going no matter what stories your fears are telling you.
I fully expect my creativity and the flow of it to change over time. Already I am surprised by how and when it shows up. All I can do is continue to exercise that creativity every day, to keep the channels open and minimize the frenetic energy that builds up inside when I have been too distracted by other things for too long.
I keep showing up. I keep going. That’s all I can do.