Five . . . sorry, six . . . things to do when you have writers block and one thing not to do

 

This does not pretend to be a comprehensive list. It's just I remember what having a block used to be like – I'd wander round like some kind of wee lost soul for weeks – and you don't get the time back. A minute wasted is a minute lost. I turned fifty a few weeks ago and I'm starting to do my sums because that's me about two-thirds done bearing in mind that neither of my parents made it to seventy-five and it depresses the hell out of me how much of that two-thirds I frittered away on daft stuff like bemoaning my lot in life.

Also by the age of fifty one would hope that I've gained a bit of wisdom or if not wisdom exactly then at least experience. So here goes.

Things to do

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1. Read

Every writer will agree that reading is vitally important. And personally I never have enough time to read. I stopped having a to-read pile a long time ago. I have a to-read shelf. Which is nice. Especially when I discover a book I'd forgotten I'd bought or been given. Reading is a great stimulus. Especially if it's good writing. I started a new book last night and the use of language is simply lovely. It's nicely understated, almost childlike. My first thought was: "Now, how could I use a voice like that?"

See: What Did You Read Today? 7 Reasons Writers Should Read Every Day

2. Revise

There is more to writing than first drafts. Personally I could spend all day polishing away. It's not that I hate first drafts, it's just they can be so hard. I'm talking prose here. The bottom line is that I'm a poet first and foremost. I rarely have problems with my poetry. But my point is, there is always something you can work on that progresses your writing.

See: Revise, Revise, Revise

3. Submit

And, if you're done with all the revising then send the ruddy stuff out. It's doing no good sitting in your drawer or folder or on your hard drive. This is an area I'm particularly bad at. Sure I save links to interesting sites – I have a folder on my desktop full of them – but I find the submission process . . . well, tedious is probably the best word for it, a chore.

See: Where Do I Send This Stuff? Notes on the Submission Process

4. Exercise

How many hours have you been sat in that chair today? Or in a succession of chairs and seats? Yes, the writing life is a sedentary one but it's not an especially healthy one either. And I'm not talking about taking a break to give your eyes a rest, maybe making a coffee and fixing a snack. I'm talking about closing down your machine, sticking on a pair of shoes and going for a walk or something more strenuous if you're up for it. I'm terrible about not exercising. I don't really have an excuse. Okay I'm fatigued to start off with. But my arms and legs still work and twenty minutes of fresh air isn't going to kill me.

See: What’s Wrong with a Sedentary Lifestyle?

5. Catch up on other things

Writing can take over your life. You stop hoovering, washing dishes, changing clothes, bathing. You sleep and work and maybe grab a bite to eat in the cracks. Writing should carry a government health warning.

Even if you're not quite at that stage there will still be the odd jobs you keep meaning to get round to and never do. I need to rearrange the shelves in my office since I swapped chairs. I have a nice, big, green, leather armchair in there now. It's lovely but it obscures part of my bookcase so I need to put the books I rarely look at it the bottom shelves so I can access the current stuff with greater ease. And I've been meaning to do that for weeks now.

And once all your chores are up to date then find a new project to occupy your mind. Distraction is the name of the game here, pure and simple. And not just for an hour or two. I need to learn how to use the camera my wife bought me for my birthday which is still sitting on the unit in the living room where I put it so that I could admire it.

See: How to Simplify Your Life

Thing not to do

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You might think that this is easier said than done. It can be. If you make it. The thing about worry is that it isn't the slightest bit helpful. The question is: what is worry?

Worry is a special form of fear. It is what humans do with simple fear once it reaches the part of the brain called the cerebral cortex. We make fear complex adding anticipation, memory, imagination and emotion. – Edward Hallowell M.D., 'Why Worry?' – Psychology Today, (Nov. 1997)

Worry stems from vulnerability and powerlessness. When we worry we wrestle with larger monsters than we have to face in real life. And so when the time comes in the real world to tackle those monsters we're already in a weakened state through fighting with what we imagine those monsters will be. We will likely have lost sleep. We might have been skipping meals. It is unlikely that we will have done anything constructive while worrying that we could make use of when the real battle comes. Worrying is never useful. It handicaps and diminishes us.

I speak from experience because the anxiety I suffer from constantly is really just worry that has got out of control. I wasn't always this bad and my anxiety is only one of my symptoms but I have always worried. The thing about worry is that it is never constructive. Things will play out whatever way they play out whether you worry about them or not.

Worry comes close to superstition: If I don't worry then such-and-such will/won't happen. Remember when you were a kid and you were worried about something and you'd set yourself some arbitrary task to complete: If I do such-and-such then the bad thing won't happen.

A lot of time worry comes out of ignorance. If you've never had writer's block before then the first time can be a bitch: What if I never write again? Then you never write again. You can be unhappy about that. That would be acceptable and expected behaviour. It still wouldn't solve the problem but unhappiness is a reaction to knowing there is no solution. Worry is not.

I had a bad bout of writer's block in the nineties. It lasted three years and I honestly thought I was done. I'd moved on. But it came back and with a vengeance too. All I had to do was relax. It's like trying to force your way out of a Chinese finger puzzle. It's not going to happen. And worrying about being stuck is counterproductive too.

I'm blocked right now. As far as my novel goes. I'm not worried about it. I'm writing poetry without any problem and even a few stories but I cannot connect the two parts of my novel together, not in my head and not on the page. Having four novels behind me and knowing I had much the same problem with the third one I really am not overly concerned about what's going to happen next. If I never wrote another thing I can sit back and be happy with the body of work that I've produced but there's still life in the old dog yet.

See How to Stop Worrying: Self Help Strategies for Anxiety Relief

The other thing is to tough it out. Joyce Carol Oates has been writing for as long as I've been alive (her first story was published in the August 1959 issue of Mademoiselle) and is probably the world's most prolific writer. And yet she still gets writer's block.

I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes . . . and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so. – 'Joyce Carol Oates' in The Paris Review, Issue 74, Fall-Winter 1978

If you have nothing to write about then write about nothing.

Let me give you an example of her get-on-with it attitude. Last year her husband of forty-seven years died. What did she do? Seven months later she was remarried and getting on with things. And coming out with a collection of fresh work entitled Dear Husband. She's a writer. How else was she going to deal with his death?

I suppose that could have been a sixth point:

6. Write something else.

If you can't write what you're trying to write then write what needs to be written. Let the writing point you in the right direction and stop forcing yourself to work on what you think you should be working on. If your husband of forty-seven years dies then capitalise on the fact. Write a book about it. (I, of course, don't mean 'capitalise' in the financial sense.)

One last point:

The philosopher Ian Hacking has written about the problem of “dynamic nominalism,” meaning that once you invent a category—as, for example, the category of “homosexual” seems to have been invented in the late nineteenth century—people will sort themselves into it, behave according to the description, and thus contrive new ways of being. Possibly, some writers become blocked simply because the concept exists, and invoking it is easier for them than writing. Some may also find it a more interesting complaint to bring to a psychoanalyst than garden-variety inertia. – Joan Acocella, 'Blocked', The New Yorker, June 14^th, 2004

Now, let's not get into a debate over homosexuality here, but he does have a point. Everyone knows that self-diagnosis is a dangerous thing. We invariably jump to the worst case scenario: I can't write. Christ! I must have the dreaded writer's block. I'll never write again. My life is over. Shoot me. Shoot me now. Now, I'm not saying you ignore the symptom but don't assume the obvious answer is the only one. You might only be run down. You might need to recharge your batteries. Take a break. Read a book. Watch TV. Go for a run. Put up that shelf you've been meaning to for months. Just don't waste the time, eh?