Maybe it’s the end of the long holiday season.  Maybe it’s the general air of doom and gloom (President Obama’s inauguration notwithstanding).  But there’s been a lot of talk lately, both virtual and non, about the problem of “writer’s block”:  who has it, what is it, how to deal with it.  Well, I’m here today to ask a different question, namely, “does it really exist?”  I’m not so sure.

Of course, all of us writers have moments when we sit blankly staring at the white page/screen.  For some of us those moments last, well, moments.  For others it can last years.  But I have to wonder if it is really true that during those “blocks” we  really can not think of one damn thing to write? I know for me, that’s never been the case.  There are always things to write about. Ideas are always there lurking somewhere in the back of my mind.  Sometimes I’ve written entire chapters while in the shower;  sometimes an entire poem while walking down the street.  But these flashes of brilliance often remain in my head and never get to the page and that, it seems to me, is the real problem.  Very often these writing blocks are not failures of inspiration, but rather, failures of will.
I’m in the midst of one right now.  The combination of the holidays and my recent operation have stalled my work now for the better part of two months.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have been able to sit in front of my computer and accomplish some things.  I’ve organized files, taken notes, edited old poems, written blogs.  But the whole time, the notebook filled with the first draft of my new novel sits there glaring at me, not so silently asking me when I will open its pages.  Right now the new novel is the hard thing, the main thing, and I just don’t have the will to get down to it.
But I’ve been here before and I have an answer — actually two answers.  First, I trick myself. I do something pertaining to the task at hand, without it really being the task at hand.  This time I’ve printed out a new hard copy of the manuscript to-date and devised a new strategy for writing draft two.  I’m going to read the whole bloody thing as it stands now just to see how it reads, what’s working and what’s not, and I’m not going to let myself write one new word. And I know that within ten pages I’ll be re-engaged and writing again. Of course it’s just a mind game (forbidden fruit and all that). I don’t mind admitting that I’m a head case when it comes to writing, but at least I now know how to make it work to my advantage.
My second answer is, I think, more interesting.  Work on somebody else’s work.  Teach, mentor, offer advice to a friend, edit someone else’s writing, do anything that gets those juices flowing, but don’t do it for yourself.  The other day a good friend of mine came over with her brilliant new novel (you know who you are out there :-)) ).  It’s ready to go; the world will be a better place when it is actually published.  But she needed a cover letter, a synopsis, a list of agents — all that soul-destroying stuff you have to do to get that novel published once it’s written.  Helping her write HER synopsis, HER cover letter, got me excited again about this writing world I inhabit and how I long to work within it.  And so I thank her for letting me help her — because in the end it has helped me just as much.
A failure of will…..it happens to us all.  We’re only human after all and we demand something quite difficult and often quite painful from ourselves.  But a “will” can be manipulated and rediscovered.  A “block” is something more imposed, external, artificial.  Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics, but it’s all about words with us anyway, isn’t it?