Dealing with the Dreaded Block

Over the past eighteen months I've suffered from the most dreadful case of writer's block. Many writers refuse to acknowledge that such a thing exists. They will say that it's just laziness or lack of talent. I say different. I freely admit to being hopelessly lazy. Without a deadline to work to I will do anything almost anything to avoid sitting down to write. At some point however, I do eventually get started.

My recent experience has been different. I simply could not marshall my thoughts. Nothing I wrote seemed at all coherent. I couldn't come up with a single original idea. I thought I was cracking up.

I found myself on a nasty downward spiral. I was desperate to write. I knew that if I could just complete a piece of work, I would be over the hurdle. However, the more desperate I became, the more difficult it became to write. I found that I couldn't write for wanting to write. My writing muscle was paralysed. That sounds crazy, but that is how it felt.

I began reading magazines and books on writing in an attempt to get myself in the right frame of mind. It helped up to a point. Stephen King's On Writing in particular was inspirational. Reading it felt like he was in the room with me, telling me what being a writer should be all about. When I finished reading On Writing I really wanted to get on and write something. I have at least a dozen or more ideas for books that I've been sitting on for a while, but still the juices weren't flowing properly. I couldn't get my ideas down on paper.

I tried all kinds of things. Sitting at my desk with a pen and paper. Trying to write on my laptop. Going out to the woods and trying to write outdoors. Different times of day and night. Nothing worked.

Eventually I decided to go back to basics, and do what all the experts recommend. Just write something every day. It doesn't matter what, or how poor it is. Just write!

I bought The Writer's Block by Jason Rekulak and began just turning to random pages and writing about whatever was on that page. Nothing too complicated, just letting my consciousness wander and getting it all down on paper. The sense of pride (not to mention relief) at seeing a page of my own work was staggering. The quality of my jottings was not that great and a bit unstructured, but at least I was writing. My confidence began to grow.

I was diagnosed with depression a couple of years ago which I now realise has probably been at least part of my problem. The medication I was taking played havoc with my concentration and left me permanently tired and lethargic. The problem hasn't gone away, but with the drugs out of my system and writing at least a few hundred words every day I feel like I am making progress. The quality isn't always fantastic, but I feel like I am working again.