For storycraft on Tuesday night, we discussed the bane of so many writers: Writer’s Block.
Before the meeting, I trolled about on the Internet for a bit to help formulate points for discussion. And I came across this post, which states that all writer’s block has one cause: fear.
I brought this idea up to the group, and the unanimous response was disagreement. (And, actually, if read on to the rest of the post, I feel like even the original author somewhat contradicts his original statement.)
The thing is that there are different types of writer’s block. Sure, maybe some do stem from fear. Certainly when one is afraid of how something will be received, that can have a negative effect on the creation process. And previous failure or fear of failure can add to that. My group dubbed this particular type of writer’s block the Inner Critic block.
But all writer’s block?
I would argue that most writer’s block stems more from a planning standpoint than fear. You know, when you can’t figure out a logical way to get from point A to point B. When your characters can’t complete planned plot because they’ve changed through their arc and the actions no longer fit. When you’ve thrown so much at your characters that you can’t see how to get them out of the mess. Stuff like that.
What do you think, squiders? Is fear the cause of all creative block? I would say no, but let me know if you disagree.
We also discussed what types of writer’s block is most common for each of us. For me, at least recently, it’s been that I’ve had so many projects that need to worked on that I haven’t been managed to make much headway on any of them. We also talked about fixes–and mine is that I need to prioritize and focus on finishing one thing before moving on to another. What’s your most common block? What do you find helps?
