Does writer's block exist?

I've never understood what people mean by "writers block" when they ask whether it "exists" or not.

To my mind, sometimes the words come easily, sometimes they don't. I always thought of writer's block as the "sometimes they don't."

Since I doubt people who "don't believe in writer's block" are claiming the words always come easily for everyone, there's clearly some other -- much stronger -- definition that I'm unaware of.

What definition are others using for "writer's block"?

I think of it like the 'hitting a brick wall' when it comes to sport. My block occured for a few years but this was in relation to painting and it was due to studying it to where I got the point where I thought I couldn't think for myself any more. I think the block comes with any creative craft really.

It's not that easy to get out of. I think writers block comes down to self esteem and issues with thinking you're not good enough to write. And I have been there plenty of times where I haven't written for months on end.

But it is real and it's a problem the writer has to get out of themselves I found writing exercises and reading helped.

Depends on how you define writer's block. Those who say it doesn't exist often define it as a disease or mystical condition. Personally I say it exists, but is usually a symptom of something else. It's not mystical. It's just that there's obviously something bothering the writer that's getting in between them and their writing. For me it's usually depression, fear, or anxiety.

CChampeau said:

I think the root of "writer's block" is fear - the fear to write something bad.

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Naw. It's more complicated than that. I have times when I just don't have anything to say. Fear has nothing to do with it. The tank is just empty.

I generally cope with it by reading and doing things that don't fully engage my brain, like hiking, driving, gardening, cleaning up the garage. Reading helps, but watching movies or TV or visiting people doesn't, because they fill the processors and keep the subconscious from doing its job.

In a day or a week or as long as three weeks, the green light goes on to indicate my brain is working again, and I go back to writing.

I think writer's block is real to many people and sometimes when you're sitting there looking at a blank page and you just can't find your way past it or a way around it, it starts to cascade on top of you until you're just covered under in doubt and fear on top of whatever other reasons that existed to bring you to a standstill, it's hard to see anything else.

Sometimes writer's block isn't a blockage of words at all but something much deeper, like you suggest. I know there have been times when I've hit the wall, it had nothing to do with my writing at all that had me running in place. Or standing there looking at the insurmountable hill and wondering what the hell I'm going to do to get past it.

Most of the time it is my doubt and my fear. Those I just found that I have to gut and muscle my way through it.

Sometimes, when I find I'm in a scene and have no idea what to do next and I'm paralized with the terror that I no longer have words in me, I have something I do that works for me first time, every time to get my fingers moving again.

And while I haven't found it has happened to me, I think the advice is still valid that when you are there with the tatters of your WiP and wondering how you're going to make this work, to step backward and try to find the point in your novel where you've gone wrong. There was a misstep somewhere to sent you off on a side tangent from which there is no way out and you have to back up until you reach that point and then try again.

Often times, the brain just needs a break. To do something else for a while, have something else to focus on. Which is why I have a regular writing schedule and make sure to give myself time off to play at other things.

I think it's the writer who is in tune with themselves and know what's best -- know when they are truly stymied and when they are procrastinating out of fear and self-doubt; know when something will work if they take a breath and step out of the box for a moment until they get around the blockage, and when they simply don't want to because any change is not desireable and will insist that nothing else will work ever and hold to their own self-defeating attitudes and flounder in their writing drama stew because being blocked is easier to deal with than doing the hard work of trying to figure out what exactly is the problem -- that is able to move past writer's block.

Well, I couldn't care less whether you think it exists or doesn't exist, CC.

To some folks it is very real.

If you go back one click from here and look above the top of the thread listings, which you had to be in in order to open this thread, you will see there is a whole Forum devoted to Outwitting Writers Block.

If you have something to contribute, contribute it there, although from your post you don't seem to have anything constructive to contribute at all.

CChampeau said:

I am of the opinion that it exists, but only to a limited extent. You can always write crap, but to be blocked so completely that you can't write at all? Please.
I think the root of "writer's block" is fear - the fear to write something bad. That is what prevents us from writing at all. Yet, there are methods to get over this fear, as detailed in one of the Sticky threads in the Basic Writing Questions subforums.

Honestly though, despite the great advice in there, I think a more psychological point of view is appropriate. There's something deeper there. I haven't studied much psychology (at least not formally) but psychoanalysis could hold some valuable key hints as to beating writer's block.

Like I said, I don't think it really exists. I'm interested in hearing y'all's opinions on this.

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CChampeau said:

I'd like to understand how this is real to some people. In my case, I can always make up some crap but, of course, it is crap. I'm of the opinion that anyone can do the same. And even when it is crap, something good may come of it.

I agree with you as to taking a break - it's been essential for me at least, in beating a befuddled mind.

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Well that's assuming people are made just like you. Maybe you can do it like that, not everyone can. Just because you can, doesn't mean the block doesn't exist.

Which we all know we are not all the same, we all don't handle ourselves and our emotional well beings the same, we all have different needs, different creativities.

Everyone handles handle these stunts in creativity differently, everyone handles writers block differently. All sorts of things cause it. There's no one solution and no one cause.

Read your original post again.

Check the Please at the end of the first paragraph, and the suggestion that psychoanalysis might hold a key to beating it - although you don't think it really exists.

CChampeau said:

I know; I did acknowledge that sticky. As for how legit the thread is, I wanted to specifically address whether it exists, not how to beat it.

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CChampeau said:

I agree with you as to taking a break - it's been essential for me at least, in beating a befuddled mind.

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... yep. Good advice. There are days when one just isn't up to writing. The best thing to do is to put it off for another day. Trying to push through and write, anyway, can be counterproductive and wearying. Of course one shouldn't make postponing a regular habit. Once in awhile is fine. More than that, a bit troublesome.

Considering I've had writer's block ... yeah, it exists. No fear was involved. I don't think it turns up in novel writing as much, but it turns up in TV writing. There, the writers are required to produce a tremendous amount of new writing in a relatively short period of time. It's like they're creating 20 novels, from idea to creation to revision to final. One writer on Mission Impossible wrote so much during the first season that he had to quit because he was dry. Completely burned out. A woman I met who wrote for the Love Boat told me she ran into the same problem.

And me? I was trying to break into Hollywood. I wrote a screenplay every week. I didn't take any breaks when I finished; I just went right onto the next one because I thought the writing would be there. Then, one day, it was gone. I couldn't even simply start writing a sentence to get started. It just wasn't there. And it took about 2 years to recover.

I think I kinda get what you mean, CC.

Barring physical limitations, it's always possible for someone to sit down and string some words together. But sometimes, for a whole variety of reasons, the only thing that would produce is a random assortment of nonsensical words. I think the debate is more about what to do when you get to this state. Do you take a break or do you write through it? Sometimes I've written through it and found I wasn't nearly as stuck as I thought. One time I wrote through it and produced a short story about a guy doing nothing but moving furniture around his office.

Everyone has a different definition of how badly they have to get stuck before they call it "writer's block," and everyone has a different approach for how to deal with it.

yes. it exists and it lives in my basement. Come over and let's try to stab it to death.

Linda Adams said:

Then, one day, it was gone. I couldn't even simply start writing a sentence to get started. It just wasn't there.

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OMG thank you.

I've never seen anyone else put it like this, but this has happened to me. Twice. And I feel for you -- two years is a LONG time. For me it was five months the first time, about a month the second time.

My husband is very supportive of my writing and knows how I get when it's not going well. The first time it happened, he wondered why I was so upset and I told him about the block thing. The only way I could explain it was "it's just gone. I have no words. They aren't there." It was devastating to me, because I'd been so productive, and I was right in the middle of a manuscript, and suddenly... I had nothing.

It might have been a combination of creative overload and stress. I didn't analyze it much. All I know is that every day, I would sit down and try to force the words out. A paragraph. A sentence. Anything. But I absolutely could not do it, and it was torture to even think about trying.

Sure, it sounds all mystical and channel-y and whatnot. The whole suffering artist thing. But the thing is, I've never thought of myself as an Artist. I just love telling stories, and I work hard to tell them in the best way I can. So not being able to do it was killing me.

I cried when I finally got back to writing again. I thought I'd lost it forever. And when it happened again, I recognized that horrible locked feeling and forced myself to NOT try writing every day, because I knew it would make me feel even worse. I read a million books and watched a million movies. That time it went away faster.

I don't believe all writer's block is caused by fear or laziness or some subconscious desire to not move forward for whatever reason. When you're really blocked, it really REALLY sucks.

I consider it quite real, and quite treatable. I also think we experience blocks we don't recognize as blocks, and it comes out in procrastination, excuses, and yes, even outright fear. You can be writing - even writing good stuff- and still be blocked. If you're holding back on the throttle of your creativity, then there is blockage and it's not always 100% blockage - those are just the only ones we talk about.

I'm a flat-out evangelist for the Artist's Way series which was created to address creative block, as it has helped me personally a great deal and continues to help me. However, I know it won't work for everyone. Especially since people get into huge guilt trips when they try it and can't complete the program, which is really just another sign of being blocked.

Yes, to me it does exist because I experienced it this past weekend precisely, yesterday. Saturday I only wrote 4k words on one of my three WIP's, yesterday I cut 900 words from another WIP, and it wasn't until today that I really got into that WIP that I had started Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, and stopped working on at 33.5k words. Now I'm up to 36.6k words, but I cut 900, so in reality I have done over 4k so far. That's great, compared to yesterday's 0 words. It had nothing to do with fear. I was just tired. I don't know why you all of a sudden come at us with this in the Basic-Writing Questions forum when there's a whole forum dedicated to Outwitting writer's block like Bufty said, before you shot back at her, she having every reason to come at you the way she did...I mean please, in the OWB forum here at the Water Cooler, people that have experienced it in a million different ways for a million different reasons can and will give you a better perspective there, but you have to realize just because it's always easy for you, that doesn't mean that it's always easy for all of us and we just don't write because we're just lazy. You're one of those people I hate interacting with. Realize the whole world does NOT revolve around you. People with this kind of attitude innerve me, make me and a few other people feel outright and downright inadequate, for no reason. You seem to be one of those people that enjoy putting others down just to boost your own self-esteem. I said what I said and no matter what you say, I'm not taking anything back because it only took the few posts of yours in this thread to figure you out.

CChampeau said:

I'd like to understand how this is real to some people. In my case, I can always make up some crap but, of course, it is crap. I'm of the opinion that anyone can do the same. And even when it is crap, something good may come of it.

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bearilou said:

I think writer's block is real to many people and sometimes when you're sitting there looking at a blank page and you just can't find your way past it or a way around it, it starts to cascade on top of you until you're just covered under in doubt and fear on top of whatever other reasons that existed to bring you to a standstill, it's hard to see anything else.

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As you don't understand, it's pretty clear you've never been faced with it.

Never face looking at a computer and feeling ill because at that particular time, a simple reminder of a stupid computer brings on all kinds of feelings and emotions that may not even be associate with writing.

I'll give you an example.

I'm currently living very remotely. It's a half hour drive to the nearest gas station, grocery store, hell civilization. We live on a dirt road that is a mile from the nearest road and we are the only house on it. No neighbors. Just us in the house, the farm animals and the occasional hunter that vrooms by.

I'm unemployed. So that means in order to get a job, I'll be driving at a minimum of half an hour if I'm lucky to get a job at the nearest small town. And it is small.

I do what job hunting I can through the internet. Don't know about you but the local papers here are filled with foreclosures and the only want ads are those looking to 'Make $1000 a day surfing the internet'. Or a truckdriver with CDC and X years driving experience. Yet every day, I get online and scour hotjobs, usajobs and all the host of job sites out there looking for work.

This has been going on now for three years. No prospects.

The depression starts to wear on a person after a while. There's only so much praying and positive thinking a person can do on their own before they hit that breaking point.

So the thought, the mere thought of sitting down to the box that is 1) my only contact to the outside world (other than family consisting of one) 2) a constant reminder of what pretty depressing circumstances I find myself in and 3) a tool that reminds me that day after day, if I struggle with the words, if I manage to make it all right, if I find someone to represent me, if all these variables, some of which I can control and some of which I can't...makes me ill to think about on some days.

That's how someone can be brought to a standstill and suddenly feel overwhelmed by it all.

However, after all that, it's not a pity party I'm throwing. I don't get there often and most of the time I do manage to keep things separated out. It's been a struggle at times and I've had to find a way to tease out the depression that is due to current circumstances, figure out a way to turn it to the positive and keep going forward with what little momentum I can scrounge up on some days.

I'm a list-maker and a goal-setter and know how to break down insurmountable tasks into smaller ones. It's how I cope. I see a problem and start looking for ways to beat it. But some days...it's really hard to see any solutions at all.

CChampeau said:

As for writer's block and how, for yourself, it hasn't been spawned of fear...I wonder if in the experience your mind is blank? Or something else?

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It was more of something else, though I'm not sure really how to describe it beyond that the whatever makes writing writing simply was not there.

They way I operate, I can't let it exist. Rather, I can't let it stop me writing. I may write whatever comes to mind, and it may not make sense or be interesting, but usually it will lead to something I can work on eventually.

What creates writer's block for me is assuming I need to write something that will be "a story" right away. The last story I started, I just went into some exposition/world-building, and found my character along the way. Story seemed unsalvageable, heck, not even a story at all, up until that point.

If I stopped at the initial idea, which was really kind of stupid on its own, I would have "writer's block." Or at least what I call writer's block.

There is a fear there for me, that I'm constantly ignoring. "Be good, be good, be good, build your writing career, make it good, make people like your stuff, make it interesting, crap out cool stories." It just doesn't work that way, unfortunately. Reminding myself of that, to me, is erasing writer's block.