How I Beat an Eighteen Year Long Writing Block

I sat down and wrote a new short story.

Done.

So that was fast. But seriously… To talk about how I defeated the block we have to agree that I was, in fact, blocked, and that I have in fact, beaten that block, and then, I need to generalize something out of that experience that justifies hitting the ‘publish’ button. Which I might not do.

There! That’s a part of it, isn’t it? I don’t know if this essay is worth publishing already… so why write it again? God knows people smarter than me have defeated far more serious blocks, oh, not only smarter, but much better writers, so, use the Google, go read them.

Never mind about me, my writing, this essay, okay I’ll quit now this was a waste of time. God I’m an idiot. Why are I doing this again?

And there it is. See? I let it out. Christ it’s ugly.

TRIGGER WARNING: I’m gonna spew my whole ugly internal monolog below; this will seem crazy and awful to some and familiar to others; the steps for beating the block are tucked inside a mind  trying to write this article. And what it feels like to break out, bit by bit, like a baby bird chipping out of its egg with its pathetically tiny beak. 

Being blocked is how you talk yourself out of doing something you kinda sorta love to do and kinda sort really wanna do but can’t do as much you kinda sorta wanna do.

It’s a way you talk to yourself that you’d never talk to anyone else. Unless the person you’re talking to is aspiring to opiod abuse or child molestation. Or joining a stupid religious cult.

Hm. Is writing a stupid religious cult?

There! There it is again! It’s never far from me. Always within arm’s reach.

People who have never had blocks, really, who have neutotypical brains and good work and study skills like to write essays about defeating procrastination and they often start with sound simple advice you can’t act on. At all.

Because you’re a weak ass fuck.

Imagine the beach house you will buy when you’re a bestselling author! Clip a picture out of a magazine and put it on the bulletin board next to where you write!

Look. That works for some people. And I’m making fun of it, like a dick, because, here is rule 1 to getting out of your writers block–

1. Your solution may be unique to you. Keep trying everybody’s else’s ideas as best you can till you figure it out, but don’t be surprised if the first few attempts don’t pan out.
2. My own list is idiosyncratic. I’m weird. If you think it’s stupid laugh at it and me. It’s okay. I can’t hear you. Huh, the voice changed in this list. Never mind. keep going.
3. Find someone who likes what you do and listen to them for a period of time about your work. Look at positive reviews. Imagine people out there that might like what you might do.
4. Okay, that didn’t work, those people were you friends or family or the occasional odd stranger on the net, who knows you only through your work, whose opinion ought to mean something, but this isn’t working so on to the next.
5. Lower your standards. Prime the pump. Push out the brown water that collected in your creative pipes. (I know. Eww.)
6. That sort of works, doesn’t it? You’re not ready to believe in 3. Christ I’m an idiot. This numbering reads as a kind of ordering and this is the wrong order. Is there even a right one?
7. Let that go. 
8. Play. You’re playing at the thing. You’re a dilettante. That’s okay. Dabble. It’s your hobby. Roll around in the misery of these words for a bit while you dabble away, you weak ass dabbling piece of shit hobbyist motherfucker who will never be professional, you. If it’s working. If these words make you sad, fuck this shit. Go to the next.
9. Start something great, that has been inside you, waiting to get out, that you have returned to, in memory. Remember those ideas, that were too big, that you couldn’t do, that needed research, that you had to be a better writer to do? Start one of those. Oh, and skip the research. Do that later. Life’s too short.
10. Oh. You’re just dabbling. You didn’t do the research! So this is nothing. So… hey the pressures off. Keep going. Don’t look at your feet. Don’t be the centipede that forgets how to walk because suddenly it’s all complicated, oh, it is complicated, oh, I CAN’T RESTORE A MAN’S BRAIN, JIM! THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHERS IS FADING!
11. Oh, you stopped. You looked at your feet, didn’t you?
12. Search for other people’s inspirational crap. Read it. Be annoyed that none of it is really working. Begin to panic.
13. Well. there’s that crap you managed to pump out, the play stuff. You can edit that. Make it better. Not good enough to send out maybe. But you can make it better.
14. Edit. Start to like the stupid crap more than it deserves. 
15. Edit more. Start to think maybe someone would like this thing, someone could buy it.
16. Get frustrated editing and start something new. Oh, you’re being a loser, you should be finishing that thing you started and submitting it. Write more raw crap instead. God. You have zero discipline don’t you?
17. Finish original thing. Well. Abandon it.
18. Send first thing out. For fun. To get a rejection and feel like you’re in the game.
19. Keep playing and start the next thing you believe in before you get the first thing rejected. Start two, three… or a hundred if you can. Forget I said a hundred. Just start two! Wait! One is enough!
20. Look at your feet. But keep walking. Think, Holy shit. Am I blocked anymore? My feet keep walking. Now stop looking at them. 
21. Don’t write for some time. Start again. Nope. Not blocked. Only lazy! Lazy lazy lazy. Hey. Be a bit less lazy. Read productivity essays. Be annoyed at the people who write them, and those they work for. Those judgemental neurotpyical assholes. 

So, you’re not blocked anymore. Now. Don’t stop writing long. Remember to play, do fun things. Remember to edit those things when you feel like you can’t write. Remember to fall in love with the things you edit, because hey, you made them better and that was some hard work, wasn’t it?

Remember to play, to work, to wonder, to be critical, to be kind, to be hopeful, to despair a bit knowing that you can get past the despair, let go of expectations, do it anyway, have expectations, do it anyway, be broken hearted about rejection, keep going, be briefly happy at small success, look at others greater success in social media and experience burning jealousy and angry self loathing at your jealousy, but hit the ‘like’ button anyway, keep going, keep going, keep going.

You have inertia now. Object in motion.

I was gonna map this shit onto my little career, he says, resisting the quotes around the word, but you don’t care, you haven’t read my work most likely, so suffice to say, my most loved novella was that thing that I wasn’t qualified to write that I was ruminating on for 18 years. Know that I did no research until I was well into it.

Know that it became the cover novella in a magazine that has been around for 40 years, and that these flagship magazines in the genre linger for decades, and that people go back and read them, for decades, and that one day, after I am dead, someone, will pick up that story, and read it and have a good time with it, and think briefly of the man who wrote it, and I’ll be there, in his or her mind, outlined in the magic fire of the world that came alive in me that I made come alive in them.

He won’t wonder if it was worth writing.

She won’t care that it took me eighteen years of dithering.

They won’t lament the novels I didn’t write in that period.

Nobody agonizes over the missing novels of Raymond Carver.

They just enjoy the short stories.

Go and make the thing now. Or play at doing that. That future reader will thank you, after you’re gone. The payoff might even come quicker, but it doesn’t have to. 

Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Man gotta ask, why why why?

And centipedes never forget how to walk. That was a metaphor. For a thing that never happens.

Ponder that. Whoever made that metaphor was a fucking asshole! Think this while you take that first step without thinking.

And write.

P.S: I’m Okay. I’m fine.

P.P.S: Okay, this edit is a month past the original writing of the post, and it turns out I was NOT fine. This is the post that made me realize I was white-knuckling it, pushing hard through a lot of negative stuff. I’ve been working on this lately, doing CBT,  mindfulness meditation, and taking meds at the right dosage and it’s changed my outlook.

I debated about taking this thing down, but decided to leave it up, as it represents how people can be fizzling flaming train wrecks inside and still be performing, still keep moving and working. 

But it doesn’t help, to be like that.

If you are, work on it. 

And if you’re all about goals? Then do it to help the writing.