*Naomi Karten writes that every writer hits writer’s block and one needs to unblock himself. Wikipedia describes writer's block “as a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work.” Anything a writer writes is new work indeed which contradicts the definition itself.
Seth Godin
thinks that writing
isn’t the hard part, it’s the commitment. He also talks about how Writer’s
block never existed before the 1940s and it became a hit with writers only when
Writing became a respectable and lucrative profession. Seth asks amusingly, “No
one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has
nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until
the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down. Why
then, is writer's block endemic?”
Writer’s
block is an excuse to get away from writing. It’s at best, the fear of writing anything crappy. It’s not the inability to
write that is the problem, it’s the hard work, motivation and commitment to
write that writers lack. Additionally, writers avoid exploring different
methods of improving their writing from time to time.
Writing is
not as easy as it appears to be. It’s not as if, a writer sits in a beautiful
apartment with a beach side view staring at palm trees and ideas start striking
like stars. Writing is about serious thinking. It’s about choosing from ideas,
facts, stories, plots, characters accumulated over time. Gerald M Weinberg calls these nuggets as
Fieldstones. This means that any writer would have a ‘Work in Progress
Inventory’ that may include several books in different stages of
completion, article drafts, collection of quotes, bits and pieces of writing
that amused the writer on several occasions and so forth. He may carry a pen and paper (tools) to collect his
fieldstones all the time. Yeah, all the time! Note that the writer may not use all of these right
away. He hopes to use them someday.
Aspiring writers
all over the world are desperate to get an answer to the most dangerous
question, “How do you overcome writer’s block”. Some of these writers expect a
magical answer, “Oh! Writer’s block indeed exists and you need to do A, B and C
to conquer it.” Getting stuck
cannot be excused as Writer’s block. There’s one best way one can beat your
mind from getting stuck – Start Writing!
Addendum
It's
ironical to write a blog post on Writer's Block while I have not written on
this blog for 4 months now. Interestingly, I have been writing more than
before, but at different places like on Moolya Blog, Testing magazines and
TechWell too. Take a look if it interests you.
Moolya Blog
Testing Circus
TechWell
And many more articles in progress - I am collecting fieldstones.
*I have been reading Naomi Karten's article since 3 years and I love what she writes. I particularly like her articles on Human Behavior and its implications in organizational setups. Interestingly, I disagreed with her on this particular piece.
