It’s really interesting…some people say that writer’s block doesn’t exist. Just ask Jodi Picoult:
I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it – when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands.
So what is this thing that hits me like a brick wall? For me, writer’s block is like some obnoxious, grinning giant has just built up a wall of brick and mortar right in front of my ability to dream, all the while my lungs of creativity are being filled with cotton balls. Above all, there’s nothing I can do about it.
On a daily basis, I am bombarded by the projections of other people’s imagination–whether it be in the media or in the books. It’s amazing how each of these things influences my own imagination. Then, when I want to sit down and write…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Then, trying to pull something out of the well of nothing, I get a frustration headache and leave it alone. That, my friends, is how writer’s block works for me. Yes, there’s a brick wall, but there’s also a dark void into which I cannot tap. I think that once we start to understand the human brain a lot better, we might be able to understand why writers block happens to people like me wand why it doesn’t happen to people like Jodi Picoult.
What I want you to get out of this post is not that writer’s block is inevitable for some and nonexistent for others, but rather I want to give some advice that was given to me.
I was sitting here, cursing my luck and mulling over this empty void in my head that I can’t seem to understand or grasp when my wife noticed the look on my face and asked me what the matter was. I told her that I didn’t know. Bu then…Oh! Then she said this:
“Why don’t you write about what you’re feeling?”
And here I am. So how do you conquer writer’s block? How do you fight it? I don’t care whether it exists or not. How do you destroy the idea of writer’s block?
Write. Just write.
More often than not, you’re trying to force your creative juices one way, when maybe they’re going another. Just start writing about how you feel and don’t stop until you feel better.
