Hi all,
Welcome to part 3 in the writing series. Today we’ll be discussing writer’s block—what it is, what causes it, and how to move past it.
Writer’s block:
the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing
Anyone who has ever written anything—and I mean anything, from high school essays to NYTimes bestsellers—is familiar with the concept. It strikes randomly, and at inopportune times. It’s frustrating and slippery and headache-provoking. It grinds all productivity to a halt. It’s the creative equivalent of the runner’s “wall”, in which the runner suddenly crosses the invisible boundary between being able to comfortably run versus hobbling or crawling their way to the end. With running, we at least know its cause: a depletion of glycogen stores. But with writing, the cause is more nebulous.
The most amazing piece of writing on writer’s block is Alexander Chee’s newsletter installation, How Have You Overcome Writers Block? It’s fantastic, and a very quick read, and so well-written that to try to reword it here would be completely futile. I’ll only summarize it by saying that in it, Chee claims that the cause of writer’s block lies in shame.
When I first read the piece, I felt so defensive. I was so quick to say “No, this isn’t my problem. I’m not ashamed; I’m just having trouble figuring out where to go next.” I stepped away from the essay and then came back to it later, though, and I couldn’t believe how much it affected me in the second reading.
I don’t worry so much about what complete strangers might think of me through what I write, but instead about what people I know—my friends, family, boss, coworkers, etc.—might think of me. I worry about writing things that might make me look dumb, vain, selfish, [insert a million other negative attributes here]. I worry about writing something that would hurt someone I care about. I worry about writing something that could get me fired or forced into a mental hospital. I worry about writing something that is just straight-up bad (which is not to say I haven’t already done this; I absolutely have) and thus being subject to ridicule by people I admire and respect and people I don’t even know and never will.
And so the shame can stem from having to be honest, having to lay yourself out, good parts and bad alike, for the entertainment and/or enlightenment of others. And there’s a lot of shame in the “bad” parts of us. We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of, said things we wish we could take back. Unfortunately for the writer, this is usually where the most interesting and engaging topics for writing reside.
It may seem like this is only a problem for the nonfiction writer, but really fiction writers grapple with the same issue, because even if one believes that fiction writers aren’t just writing thinly-veiled nonfiction, the fiction writer still has to own the reality that they are the one who thought of whatever awful thing they wrote about. They’re the brain behind whatever thought or action made it onto the paper.
So the shame can lie within the content of the writing. But more simply, it can also lie within its quality, which is an entirely different shame that can be even more slippery.
The advice for each cause of shame, though, is the same: write as if no one is ever going to read it. Maybe that’s true, and you only write for yourself, but maybe there’s a small part in the back of your head that’s imagining sharing your writing with others, however vaguely, and that’s stopping you. So write it as if it is and always will be private, and cross the bridge of publicity when you arrive there, i.e. when the piece is actually finished.
A third shame I’ll talk about (wow! there’s so much to be ashamed about!) is the shame of wasted time, which is especially poignant in this age of constant productivity. Sometimes I worry about going down a line of thought that will be bad for the story and will have to be cut completely, which feels like a waste. Sometimes I worry about the entirety of the story not working out—for a variety of reasons: it was unengaging, uninteresting, self-obsessed, self-serving, etc.—and wasting hours and hours of my precious time with nothing to show for it because it was thrown into the digital trash.
In my writing club two weeks ago, a fellow writer, Emily Gaynor, said:
You have to ruin the idea to actually make the thing.
I.e. the story might not turn out the way you wanted it to. That does not mean you ruined it or didn’t do the original thought justice. Quite the opposite really. Writing is creation but it is also destruction. All writing, or at least the best of it, is the ruining of a preconceived notion or idea in pursuit of actual truth. And that process is messy and hard work.
The good news is that we do not tattoo our writing on our bodies.1 None of it is permanent. You write the story and if it sucks, you rewrite it. You start a new word doc labeled v2, that way nothing is “lost” if you find you want to return to the past. Because that’s the beautiful thing about writing that isn’t true about a lot of other things: there’s a rewind and undo button. You can always go back.
Recommended Reads
This month I really loved Emily Burch-Hudson’s piece, verified, in Forever Mag. It was sent to me by two different friends. It’s snarky. It’s witty. It’s a little mean. It’s actually the perfect companion to this newsletter’s topic since it has to do with shame and honesty (among other things).
Thanks for reading.
With love,
Arielle
Unless…?
Loved reading this! Haven't really thought about it in relation to shame before