What Writers Block Has Taught Me...

By E.S. Winter

Writers and Artists alike have felt the frustrating effects of having a “block” and are often stumped as to why it happens, or what to do about it. I’ve spoken with many people- even in the last few months- who have experienced this confusing phenomenon. No one seems to know what causes it; one day we’re creating and spilling ideas like a fountain, and the next day the pipes are clogged. Try as we might, nothing comes out, and this problem can last anywhere from days to months.

Sometimes the issue resolves itself, even if we can’t pinpoint what triggered it in the first place, but there are times where it can become so serious that it affects your daily life- even to the point of impacting your mental health.

When this happens, it can create moods of depression, anxiety, and even hopelessness around the fact that you can’t get the creative juices flowing. It can negatively impact your emotions, self-esteem, and even your sense of identity, as some people tie their creativity to their sense of self, and can push them into a chaotic spiral of existential crisis that begs the question: If I’m not a creator, what am I? If I’m not creating, what else do I have to offer?

This was one of the questions that I have personally battled with, and the descent into over self-analyzing can lead to severe mental health deterioration.

So, we can see why having a creative block can be so disruptive to some people, and why it has become a huge focal point of conversation among artists. It really is a doozy to try and decipher why this happens to us, and what to do about it. Through my own conversations with other struggling creators, there have been a number of common suggestions on how they have personally managed their blocks, such as:

Stepping away from the project for a while

Reading a book or listening to music that motivates/soothes you

Watching your favorite tv shows or movies that inspire you

Doing something you enjoy

Seeing friends and family

Exercise

Journaling your current thoughts and feelings

Basically, just taking a break and focusing on normal, everyday life for a bit.

And I think that’s good advice; a little bit of self-care can go a long way in regenerating your creativity and increasing your well-being. Having experienced writers block myself, I’ve found this advice to be very helpful. We often get so consumed in our creative process, the need to make something amazing, that we often get tied up in the fear that it isn’t good enough- or that we could have done something different- essentially just overthinking things way too much, too often. And this usually seems to be the reason for why so many writers and artists don’t finish (let alone publish) their work, we just get so caught up in the “what-ifs.”

Whether our art, whatever it may be, is “good enough” seems to be connected to the idea that our art means something not only to us, but about us. To a degree, that’s true, it takes courage to let the world see a part of yourself, out in plain view for all to either praise or scrutinize.

The reality is… every creator will face both. We will simultaneously experience positive and negative feedback because that is what the world is made of. It’s filled with different people, who have different ideas, and they all have voices. Being a creator, or at least a public one, means learning to accept that duality on a daily basis, and grow with it.

It also means being able to accept ourselves, and that’s the hard part. Just like everything else in the world, we are complex beings made up of a multitude of factors (sometimes opposing ones too). I believe our biggest mistake as creators- and as human beings- is believing that we must narrow down our field of existence into a solitary, singular trait.

That, of course, is a long conversation we can have at another time, but regarding how this affects us as creators- it’s very important to the concept. As much as this confusing, existential problem is what seems to cause writers block, in my personal experience, it is also the key to fighting it. You see I stumbled upon a discovery during one of the worst blocks I’ve experienced so far.

I decided, like many other during the pandemic, that I wanted to pursue my long-lost passion (in my case- writing) and spent roughly the next two years in a seemingly endless block, desperately wanting to write my novel but feeling completely unable to do so. That’s not to say I didn’t have the odd days of inspiration and productivity, but those days were short-lived and very sparse. The inspiration came seldom, faded quickly, and I couldn’t seem to hold onto any semblance of motivation for very long. I tried doing all the things that other people advised- taking a break, focusing on daily life, socializing when it was possible- all the while having this gut wrenching, sinking feeling of failure and ‘running out of time.’

Upon that epiphany, I asked myself “Running out of time for what, exactly?” I guess I felt like I was losing time, that I was getting older and out of my prime years for success. A silly thought, now that I look back at it, because I later realized that success isn’t defined by age or status, but by your personal definition of what success means to you. Nevertheless, it was a weight on my mind at the time. At twenty-nine years old, I felt like I should be farther in life (how laughable, in this stifling economy!) that I should have more to show for all my effort in writing, in my hobbies, and other aspects of life.

“Why do I feel like a failure?” I then began to ponder this question, and the more I pondered, the more questions I asked myself, but I didn’t feel like I had any answers for them. This became so intense that it began deeply affecting my mental health, to the point of stagnating my life. I became depressed, stopped doing all the things I cared about as I found no point in doing them, and I became increasingly more distant from my family and friends. And they noticed, but the more they tried to reach me the more I withdrew.

Back then, I didn’t understand what was happening to me, but now I can clarify that I was simply overwhelmed. All of life’s responsibilities and burdens compacted on top of a pandemic and my growing fear that I was not doing enough with my life, that I was not taking up useful space in the world. Useful. That word hit me like a brick wall, for some reason, and I started thinking more intently on it. I wanted to feel useful. Why?

Well, I knew I wanted to write because for one; it was a release from the mental prison my mind can be some days, with only my own voice swimming around inside it, assailing me with frustrating questions and intrusive thoughts. But I also knew that through writing, I wanted to give something to other people, to the world. So, by not writing, or being able to write, I was denying that dream, which only made the overwhelming feelings of frustration and failure intensify. That lead me to my next question- Why am I denying my dream?

Upon more thought process, I concluded that it was because I didn’t think my writing was good enough. Why didn’t I think it was good enough? Well… because I didn’t feel that I was good enough. Remember what I said earlier, about art being connected to our identity and learning to accept ourselves? What could I possibly offer the world?

It was an honest question, and it plagued my mind day and night, I began to feel a bit of that “imposter syndrome” people have been talking about- where you feel like a fraud because you don’t really measure up to the same standards as your peers- and the more I delved into the subject the more I realized that my inability to write was connected to my sense of self- to my identity.

Upon discovering this new epiphany, I turned to articles on the internet, and realized that many people experience the same feeling. Much of it appears to be tied to our place in society, our relationship with media, and each other. Modern media often spins us the tale that if we are not being productive or useful, we are not doing enough to earn our place in the world. We are also fed the misconception that if we are not entirely unique in our ideas, that we are ‘frauds,’ and our ideas are undeserving of the spotlight. Yet that concept goes completely against what any artform truly is- Your Heart. Your Voice.

If there was ever a way to gaslight and silence an entire society of its validity, that would certainly do it.

Now I know we’re going down a bit of a rabbit hole here, but bear with me, because it will make sense by the end of this paragraph how these subjects contribute to creative blocks. The primary reason being, that our artistic and creative expression is usually tied directly to our sense of worth or self. That’s not the case for everyone necessarily, but for most it seems to be a common problem.

I know for myself, personally, if I’m feeling unwell or unhappy, I can’t create. I need to feel something in order to create, even if it’s anger or sadness, but to feel nothing... in those eight months I had disconnected myself from the world and withdrew into the darkest places of my mind. I was experiencing a lot of upturn and turmoil, my life was being completely uprooted, and I had no idea where to replant myself. After all, what do you hold onto when everything you were holding onto has disappeared? To move forward, I had to answer this question for myself. I found my answers in several instances:

One. I didn’t have good self-worth, and I was attaching my worth to my productivity, instead of recognizing that worth is not earned, it is automatic. You have worth simply by being, you are born with worth, but even in knowing this I still had to figure out a way to like myself, to be happy with who I was (that is still a battle I’m fighting, but every small step brings me closer to discovering it).

Two. I was struggling with my identity. Now that’s an in-depth subject I’d like to touch on in another article, but ‘who you are’ has everything to do with how you write, what you write about, and why. Authors put the experiences of their heart and soul onto pages for others to experience, and it becomes very hard to do that if you’re uncertain about who the person on the page is. As I mentioned, my life was in total upheaval at that point, so I didn’t feel confident or grounded in anything, let alone myself. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean you have to have it all together in order to pursue your dreams, but you have to be grounded in something about yourself, otherwise you’ll get lost and if you’re a writer who is lost, then your readers will be too.

Three. I didn’t have experience. That can mean many things, but in this case, I was trying to run before I could walk. I was attempting to write one of my best ideas for a novel before I even knew anything about the process of writing or getting published. How on earth was I going to write an entire novel when I was even rusty on grammar?

Realizing these core things, in context to my personal writer's block and how it affected me, I drew this conclusion: Writers Block happens when you know something is wrong, you just don’t know what. Your subconscious- and even your body- react to the fact that there is something weighing you down. It will continue to weigh you down until you find a way to resolve it, and so I believe we involuntarily ‘shut down’ in an attempt to ‘slow down’ and process our subconscious.

For me, this explained why I was distancing myself from my loved ones. I needed space. I needed time alone to grapple with all the questions I had and try to find the answers. I needed less stimulation- not more- and forcing myself to be happy (when I wasn’t) and socialize when I was already feeling so burnt out and overwhelmed was making things worse. By ignoring these signs, I spiraled into eight months of fighting with myself when it could have been resolved much quicker, had I listened to what my body was telling me. At that time, I needed rest. I needed peace and quiet and to be alone. Of course, being alone for too long can become mentally draining as well, so as individuals we must learn how to balance our lives so that we get equal parts of what we need, when we need it.

Once I recognized these things, it became a matter of discerning what I needed to do to overcome it. The first step in my personal journey was going to therapy. That isn’t necessarily the right option for everyone but considering the intensity of my problems at the time, it was the right choice for me. After a rough year in CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, which deals in re-routing problematic habits and mental stressors into a healthier and more balanced mindset) I wasn’t a perfect picture, not by far, but I had learned some new and mentally life-saving tools to help me along the way.

The next steps involved accepting my situation and creating a more manageable lifestyle, schedule, and balance for myself. That included building up my self-esteem by recognizing my strengths, and my weak points. One of which was accepting that I just was not ready to write my novel, not before I first found my voice as an author. I didn’t want to put down writing altogether, so I settled for an alternative; practice writing through articles- like this one- short stories, and you know what… I could probably write a novel- I just no longer want it to be this one. The one I have my heart most set on, written with so little experience, and possibly stamping an early grave on something that could have had so much more potential. So, I’m still going to write a novel, it just won’t be my best one, because it makes more sense (and is less pressure) to build up to that experience.

Over the last two years I’ve been learning about writing techniques, using better grammar (although I still have my days, there is always something to learn more about) joining writing communities (Scribophile is a great site to meet other authors and find beta readers by the way!) and after listening to many hours of professional authors on Masterclass, I certainly feel better about my skills and voice as a writer. Sometimes we try to skip the journey on our quest to reach the mountain, but it is in the journey that we find our ability to climb it. I believe that’s some quote I read somewhere, but I’ll repurpose it here. I now feel ready to write a novel, it’s just not the one I had initially planned, and that’s ok, because that’s a much bigger mountain that I want to climb once I work up to it.

In conclusion, blocks happen when something is weighing us down. It can be as simple as not feeling ready for something yet, or as complex as how we manage our mental health, or how mental health impacts our creativity. But I believe that regardless of the reason, blocks can actually be helpful tools (just as all emotions are) in helping us to recognize something about ourselves. We just need to be willing to listen and find the answer.

Now, let’s say you have all the skills and preparation you could possibly hope for, but you’re still unable to write. Is it due to a demanding job? Perhaps some life lessons and personal hurdles are holding you back? Or maybe, like me, you are worried that your stories- or art- won’t have anything to offer… that you won’t stand out from the many artists and storytellers out there. When I start to have thoughts like this, I refer to a particular quote that stuck with me through my studies, although I can’t quite remember which author said it, but it goes something like this:

“Maybe your novel is a lot like someone else’s, maybe the story you’re writing has been heard before, but it’s important that you write it anyway. Because only you can write that story through your eyes.”

I keep those words in my back pocket, as a reminder while I continue down this road. In those moments where I feel like giving up, I recite them, and it brings me comfort to know that others have been where I am, but also that my unique perspective will offer something that no one else can. Because I am the only one who has seen this world through my eyes, and that is worth writing about.