There’s no such thing as writer’s block?
“There’s no writer’s block. There’s lazy, there’s scared. But there’s no writer’s block.”
Glaring at my watch, I realize my deadline is about an hour closer than it was last time I sat down to write — and my page is still remarkably blank.
If there was ever any wonder why so many great writers regularly dabbled in excessive vice, I think it has to do with the simple fact that lighting a cigar, puffing away on a cigarette or pouring yourself a drink feels like a more constructive way to escape the struggle of the creative process than vegging out on the couch. Far from feeling like you’re merely fucking off from “work,” such procrastination gives the sensation one’s ruminating about what they have left to do rather than merely avoiding the hard work of doing it.
At times, however, it is truthfully nothing more than procrastination dressed up as contemplation.
And no matter how creative one might be, we all run into those uninspired moments of frustration — moments when the muse is nowhere to be found, and the length of time we have to alchemize something magical is running increasingly short. In writing, we call it writer’s block — and plenty has been written (ironically) about how to overcome it.
Ernest Hemingway, for example, used to say that the greatest mechanism for overcoming the melancholy of feeling uninspired was to write “the truest sentence” he could.
Of course, when you’re staring at a blank page, that’s a task that is far easier said than done. Whether it’s a graphic design project, an opinion column or even a personal artistic endeavor, creative block is a plague that will (inevitably) strike when it’s least convenient. (For example, mere hours before you’re supposed to be delivering a project to a client.)
Overcoming such inertia requires firstly understanding what, exactly, it is. And to do that, it’s worthwhile to clearly define what it isn’t: It’s not fatal. It’s not permanent. And it’s certainly not insurmountable.
According to Jerry Seinfeld, it doesn’t even exist:
“There’s no writer’s block. There’s lazy, there’s scared. But there’s no writer’s block. Just sit down and realize you’re mediocre and you’re going to have to put a lot of effort into this to make it good.” — Jerry Seinfeld
At first, Seinfeld’s assessment is somewhat hard to swallow. After all, none of us actually like being called “lazy.”
Nonetheless, there’s a great amount of truth to his take on the ubiquitous phenomenon we all face while trying to build something new. And it’s easy to see why when you think about the way in which the creative process itself manifests in the real world.
As I’ve mentioned many times before, much of the process looks remarkably unlike “work.” Writing, for example, is about 95 percent mulling ideas over in one’s mind and only about 5 percent banging furiously on the keyboard. Whether it’s chiseling away on a piece of marble or drafting a fictional opus, creating something begins with giving oneself the space and ability to imagine.
Indeed, this is one of the reasons procrastination is so rampant among creative thinkers. As I’ve written before:
Procrastination isn’t merely a maladaptive tendency to improperly manage time — it’s also a necessary condition for creative and divergent thinking.
…
From Mark Twain to Ernest Hemingway, some of the greatest writers in history have acknowledged the role procrastination plays in their process. The idea of writers madly cramming words onto the page just hours before some deadline — because they spent the bulk of their “writing” time smoking cigarettes and pacing the floor near their typewriter — has long been a meme of the profession.
In other words, creative minds tend to get comfortable with lulls in productivity, because such lulls are necessary for thinking up new and divergent ways of doing things.
Unfortunately, however, thinking is much easier than doing — and it’s far safer as well. As a result, it’s all too tempting to embed ourselves in that stage of the process for fear that the ideas, concepts or creations we’ve imagined are not yet ripe for production. We dare not risk putting forward the effort to cultivate our musings for fear that we will soon be madly deleting every word we placed upon the page or trashing a canvas in disappointment.
Or, as Seinfeld insinuated, we become lazy and scared as we take refuge in merely thinking about what we have to do rather than actually doing it.
So, what’s the answer? Well, as I often evangelize, it’s to give yourself permission to “write badly.”
Sure, Mozart could jot down perfection on his first draft as if he was merely “taking dictation,” however, the rest of us tend to require a bit more time to refine our folios before going public. Allowing oneself to “write badly” means allowing yourself the freedom to start somewhere far short of perfection — for example, with an initial draft that you fully expect to be utterly unpublishable.
Then, when you have all those awful sentences strung recklessly about the page, you buckle down and get to work making it better.
In writing, I refer to this as “pushing through the block,” and it requires a willingness to begin the bloody work even when we can’t see how there’s any way for us to alchemize it into something the world around us might enjoy.
And what better way to push beyond the stage of musing into that of creating than a little anxiety-inducing constraint on how much time we have left to devote to the process? As it turns out, deadlines have an amazingly profound effect on our ability to do the bloody work even when we’re scared, tired or otherwise unsure of how to proceed.
The lack of deadlines, by contrast, can be fatal to our creative pursuits.
This is why almost every “writer” you will meet has three to five unfinished novels tucked away on their hard drive. It’s why most people never continue that blog they set up years ago, never submit their artwork to galleries or turn their “great idea” into a reality. It’s why so many would-be authors, artists and entrepreneurs languish in a sort of unproductive purgatory as they continually tell themselves “I’ll get on it next week.”
And tellingly, it’s why most professional creatives find themselves scrambling at the last minute to produce the work they promised their clients. As Hunter S. Thompson once quipped, “I couldn’t imagine, and I don’t say this with any pride, but I really couldn’t imagine writing without a desperate deadline.”
Deadlines strip from us any possibility of indulging our sloth or fear as they hurtle toward us with a grinding metronomic perseverance.
And while we can’t all depend on others setting deadlines for us (in the way clients might request a project done by a certain date or a publisher expect a column by a certain time) we do have the ability to set our own deadlines and even recruit others to help hold us accountable.
Don’t merely tell your family you’re writing a book — tell them when you expect to have it completed. Ask your partner to remind you when the next art gallery will accept submissions. Set up a timetable for that great entrepreneurial idea you’ve been considering for the past three years.
In other words, embrace the frustration, fear and anxiety of deadlines crushing down on you, and inject accountability into the process. After all, occasionally looking at your watch and realizing just how little time you have left can be quite motivating — even beyond our creative endeavors.
Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change.
