Writer's Block

I used to think I was immune to this problem. When I started to get serious about my writing in college, I found that coming up with ideas was the easy part for me (I don’t mean that they were good ideas, I just mean that I could generate them easily), whereas fleshing them out on paper was the challenge. Every writer is different, so I am certain that plenty of great writers have had the opposite problem, and that there are plenty in between.

Everyone has a unique combination strengths and weaknesses, and those strengths and weaknesses change over time depending on how one chooses to practice. Translating ideas into words is hard for me, but I have spent so much time doing it that I think I’m pretty good at it now… yet by focusing so much on that skill I have neglected others, and so I remain with a combination of strengths and weaknesses as always.

Like I said, I used to think I was immune to writer’s block, because after years and years of practice, I’ve had many ups and downs, including plenty of dry spells. These dry spells come in several varieties, not all of them bad.

Sometimes I simply have no interest in writing—not in brainstorming nor editing nor free-form improvising. Sometimes this happens because I am depressed and unmotivated to do anything at all, but other times it’s simply because I am content to do other things with my time—there’s a big world full of amazing shit out there, writing should never be your only interest, if you ask me.

A more uncomfortable form of dry spell would be when I am brimming with new ideas but can’t focus long enough to write them out. This can be fun in its own way, but ultimately ends in frustration, when I can visualize exactly what I want in my head but can’t begin to transcribe it in words. Inspiration without a channel, like water pouring onto flat ground.

In these moments I lament that I gave up drawing as a kid. I was never particularly talented but I’m definitely a visual thinker and I feel that I could express myself quite well in images, if only I’d learned how to properly make them. Instead I get stuck with a head full of pictures and no ability to show them to anyone.

The other variety of dry spell, the one I hate the most and probably what most people mean when they say they have writer’s block, is that feeling of truly wanting to create, to produce, to make something real, but the ideas just won’t come. The focus is there, the motivation is there, you have your canal ready for the deluge, but then it doesn’t rain.

Different authors respond to this in different ways. I read that Frank Herbert, the author of the monolithic Dune series, said that to him the feeling of inspiration was almost irrelevant, that he seemed to produce the same quality of writing whether he felt inspired to do it or if he forced himself to do it.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Frank Herbert, Dune is an extraordinarily creative series, but I strongly disagree with his perspective on inspiration (not to say that he’s wrong, I just mean that what worked for him doesn’t work for me).

In my experience, when I don’t feel the inspiration flowing and I force myself to write anyway, I find that I end up wasting my time. If I labor over each sentence, if I connect the words joylessly and with only the end goal in mind, it shows through in the writing. If it’s boring to write, it’ll be boring to read, I believe.

So, if you’re like me and you really need your inspiration to write, then how do you find it when you need it?

There’s a great quote from Jack London, “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club”. This is the philosophy I follow.

Inspiration rarely comes from routines. You can, surprisingly, find it in mundanity, but not our post-modern, hyper-digital mundanity that we live in today. This is one reason why so many people struggled to stay productive or creative during the Covid lockdowns, when every day was exactly the same, and you can’t resist the incessant pull of passive media.

The infinite scroll is lethal to attention spans as well as creativity.

If you were to, say, spend a whole day sitting under a tree polishing a rock, it might feel infuriatingly boring, but I can almost guarantee it would be more inspirational than spending the same amount of time on any social media platform.

There are of course the more flashy sources of inspiration, like long-distance travel, taking drugs, or getting into dangerous situations. There is a high-risk, high-reward mentality with writers who choose these methods, but it’s important to note that some of those choices are more honorable than others.

Providing medical care in a war-torn country, for instance, would provide a deep and powerful sense of inspiration (I imagine), while also doing something truly good for the world; a cocaine binge at a nightclub, on the other hand, would provide only fleeting and superficial inspiration, while doing damage to the self and perhaps society at the same time.

Many famous and idolized writers used alcohol as their primary inspirational lubricant, and many of those same writers died young, mentally ill, and in pain. So I think it is pretty important to choose your sources well; as far as substances go I would argue that some good ol’ jazz cabbage is a much safer way to seek inspiration, but that too comes with some risks to consider.

However, there are plenty of sources you can find right where you are, totally free, and many of them are good for the mind or body in any case.

Socializing in any capacity, whether with family, friends, acquaintances or strangers. The deeper the conversation, the more everyone gets out of it.

Exercise, meditation, and nature time are essential for so many reasons, not least of which is the creative inspiration they provide.

One of the absolute best ways to find inspiration—and to spend your time in general—is to learn something new. Learn a new skill—an instrument, a language, how to drive stick, how to play chess, how to draw superheroes—or just learn about something—films, medicine, astrophysics, refrigerators, anything.

My most general suggestion though, is to stay busy. If you are active and focused each day, regardless of what you’re doing, inspiration will jump up in front of you, at least from time to time. The frustrating irony is that the busier you are the more inspired you will feel, while simultaneously having less time to profit from it. And that in itself becomes a source of inspiration, being uncomfortably busy means that once that little oasis of time finally opens up you will be flowing over with fresh ideas, your only problem then will be choosing which of them to pursue.

Those are all things you can do to bottle some inspiration, though to overcome writer’s block then there is one thing that you must do, one which gets harder all the time against the lure of the internet: read books. You just gotta read books. It seems obvious, and it’s easy for some people, but I’ve known plenty of writers, including myself, who struggle to read. We tell ourselves it’s for lack of time, but we all know that if it weren’t for our smart phones, there would be more than enough time to read.

A strategy that has worked for me recently is to take in books in different ways, and read more than one at a time. I try to always have one book to eye-read and one to listen to, and I try to choose books that are very different from each other; listen to a fantasy adventure and read a literary classic, for instance, or vice versa.

So those are my thoughts on the old writer’s nemesis we call Block. But what do you think? Where do you find your inspiration? Do you need to have that feeling to create, or are you more like Frank Herbert and just need to crank it out regardless? Let me know in the comments, thanks for reading!

Gilbo