People often ask about Writer’s Block. I’m sure it does exist, but (contentious this) I feel it’s a little like claiming to have double pneumonia when actually you have a head-cold.
Writing is a job, not an indulgence.
Of course there are days - weeks even, when you’re not in the mood. However, you have to perform. There are times when it’s very easy to veer away from actually WRITING THE DAMNED THING to ruminate instead on “where the plot’s going” or to re-read ad nauseum what you’ve already written and fiddle constantly with adjectives and semi-colons. Or to tell yourself you can’t possibly write because ‘the muse has not alighted’. The muse? What - some little good fairy who floats down and sits on top of your screen sprinkling magic glitter at you? Sometimes, I sit at my laptop, staring vacantly, wishing I had a ‘normal’ job which entailed filing, or phonecalls or general fannying about… Sometimes I feel so TIRED, tired enough to put my head down on the library table even if the people around me think I’m a loon. Sometimes, I desperately want to write - I know it’s all stored up somewhere in my head - but I can’t access it. At such times, I ignore the little voice that says bugger it! shut down for the day! go to Brent Cross shopping centre! go to the cafe! you know you want to! Instead, I simply place my fingers on the home-keys and I type a single letter. Then another. Then another. Then I’ll look at the screen and perhaps I’ve written ‘the’ or ‘and’ or ’she’. And then I’ll start another word. I’ll squeeze them out of me. Soon enough there’s a sentence. Then a paragraph. Half a chapter. A little more. Against the odds - a good day’s work.
Don’t despair - and don’t provide yourself with excuses.
www.freyanorth.com
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Writer’s Block – Fact or Fiction?
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2 comments:
I think that writer's block can happen if you feel your writing career is going nowhere. It's a job, yes, but if you were filing all day the least you would expect is to get paid for it.
Many times writers get frustrated - I know I do - when all your good work seem to go unnoticed and people do not want to hear from you just because you’re new. If all other professions worked like this we’d have pensioners working until they dropped dead and younger people everywhere signing on the dole.
It's not hard then, to have a block in your mind from doing the very thing that causes you so much pain and frustration. We choose writing as a job because we like it and we know that we have the ability to write. In this present situation when agents seem so against writers, we feel like we've got to fight against the tide at every turn - even before we've begun to swim upstream.
Having said that, I find that I’m less likely to hit a writing standstill if I'm working on several things at the same time. If I get a 'block' on one of them, I can usually switch to another about which my mind is fresher.
If writing were always as simple as putting one word after another then you'd be right, but the literary history is strewn with writers of all stripes struggling with writer's block. As a writer of chic lit you are apparently immune. Lucky smug you.
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