The Writer's Block and It's Mysterious Journey

This article was originally published on Linked In.

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. Confused? Read on.

Many people have written about Writer's block in the past. Naomi Karten writes that every writer hits writer’s block and one needs to unblock himself. Seth Godin thinks that writing isn’t the hard part, it’s the commitment. He also talks 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 to improve their writing from time to time.

The Fieldstone Method

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, and 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, a collection of quotes, bits and pieces of writing that amused the writer from his reading experiences 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 does one overcome writer’s block”. Some of these writers expect a magical answer, “Oh! Writer’s block indeed exists and you need to do A,Band C to conquer it.” Getting stuck cannot be excused as Writer’s block. There’s one best way to beat your mind out of getting stuck – Start Writing!

Good Writing References

• The Fieldstone Method by Gerald Weinberg
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E. B. White

I say this often to aspiring writers and I'll say it again, "Good Writers Read". Reading helps you improve your writing skills. So, if you aspire to get better, start reading.

How do I deal with Writer's Block?

I get stuck with writing very often, not because I lack ideas or the will to write, but because I do not find time. The truth is, I do not *make time* for writing. As Seth Godin points out, it's the commitment that matters and I try and keep that, to be able to write my articles.

How do you handle writer's block?

Writer's Block and its Mysterious Journey

*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

Moolya Startup Test Lab

My Journey to Let's Test 2013 in Sweden

Testing Circus

Challenges In A Warzone Project

Medical Emergencies and Testing Skills

TechWell 

How and When To Give Feedback

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.

Happy Writing and Happy Reading!

The Writer’s Block

Recently, I got a chance to write about testing. A couple of testing magazines called for testing articles for their upcoming publications. I thought I should try. I have never written a formal article before. By formal, I mean writing about testing for testing magazines. I did think a couple of times to write for stickyminds before I started this blog, but then it never materialized. I wasn’t probably passionate enough to write at that time.

I thought of a topic and wrote an article with a friend of mine because we thought that both of us could clear the writing hurdles easier and faster than if each of us wrote articles on our own. We wrote it, got it reviewed by a few generous friends. One of them termed the article ‘Dangerous’ – yet was kind enough to review it. We emailed the article to the concerned person. We did not receive an acknowledgment email. I and my friend knew that it was a good first attempt, but maybe not good enough even to be acknowledged. I was left depressed, but thought that I should not give up.

I got lucky second time when I got an email from a very great tester asking me if I could write an article. I was excited. I chose a topic, brainstormed a bit, gathered a lot of information by speaking to my friends about the topic and reading up a little on a few related areas. I wrote the article the second time not to mention I wrote it all by myself. The same set of generous friends reviewed it and provided feedback. One of them thought that my article sounded like an ‘Attack’ to the intended audience. This time around I was deeply hurt. For a moment, I thought I was useless. I am still struggling with this article while I write this blog post.

In the last few years, I have not found anything as hard as writing about testing. This has been the most challenging task for me in a long time now. What is stopping me from writing about what I know about testing? Why is it that I am unable to write better though I have good written communication skills? At least my blog posts aren't that bad in terms of writing (I think so). At this point of time, I am thinking that the reason for my failure in writing about testing has got to do with the following:

1. Insufficient knowledge about the chosen topic
2. Inability to brainstorm in the right direction
3. Lack of widened knowledge (there is a need to know a lot more beyond testing in order to write better about testing)
4. Lack of experience (more the experience, wider the perspective)
5. Not reading enough testing books, articles, blogs etc

I have been watching a few testers who can just write about anything related to testing based on a few catchwords (theme) given to them. That can’t be magic for sure though I know it involves a lot of hard work to get to that stage. I am not worried about failing. I would be worried for sure if I did not learn from my failure. I have not given up yet. I think of chasing every little task that challenges me. I am going to give it my best shot yet again. I am hoping I will get better each time I fail.

It is important to start practicing writing. If you cannot write well and express your thoughts about testing, how will you succeed in convincing your developer to fix a bug by writing a not-so-good bug report. Start writing and get better at it. This is a very important skill in our day-to-day job as testers.

Happy Writing,
Parimala Shankaraiah
http://curioustester.blogspot.com