How fear shuts us down

Why do we feel that, if we’re successful at writing, it ought to flow all the time? It won’t, you know.

Last week I wrote about writers’ block and how it is experienced by different writers. I’ve been thinking about it since and thought it worth another word or two.
People pounce on the word “blocked” to explain the unexplainable: the inability to continue writing. Part of the fear associated with it comes from the mysterious nature of writing.

We’re not at all sure where it comes from or how. We can’t control it. So we fear that it might stop. We also feel that perhaps, if we were more successful, if we were better writers, perhaps it would flow all the time. Being blocked marks us as a failure (in our own eyes at least).

Perhaps we should see it rather as part of the writing process, and something that everyone experiences. There are some days (or perhaps weeks) when we find it difficult to write – for a number of different reasons. And instead of using the great catch-all phrase “blocked”, which sounds so fearful in the ear, perhaps we should look at why it seems to be coming hard.

In my last book, I stalled because my research wasn’t good enough. I was writing about a place that I didn’t know well enough. I couldn’t send my characters to buy bread and milk because I didn’t know where they had to walk to.

A lot of that research you’ll never end up using, but if you don’t know the route to the local shop, you’ll try so hard to avoid what you don’t know that you’ll find yourself getting stuck.

In a previous book, I got stuck because I’d gone off at a tangent. Intuitively I knew the endless chapters I was writing were not taking the story forward, but I was stubbornly bull dozing my way through it, until I just … stuck.

In my present writing, I kept sticking because the tone or voice I was using didn’t feel authentic to me. It took a while to realise what was wrong, but as soon as it clicked, ideas began to flow again.

Sometimes I stick just because I haven’t thought things through well enough. I think many first-time writers get stuck here. They haven’t fully developed their characters or their narrative. When your characters are completely developed, they should show you what should happen next – rather than you having to struggle with their next move.

We often get stuck because we fear criticism. We can feel all the critics in our lives sitting on our shoulders poking fun and laughing. This is when you have to get strict. Knock them away and force yourself to write just for yourself. Ignore the inner critic. Tell it to get lost.

I know that’s easier said than done. I’ve been a little stuck for a few weeks because I lost confidence in myself – and my writing. I have to battle that too; tell myself it doesn’t really matter. I must try to recover that wonderful sense of writing purely for myself. 

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, writing just seems hard. But by now, I do know this: it isn’t the time to throw up our hands and say: “I’m blocked” in a tragic way. This is the time to stick at it – to force ourselves to write, word by struggling word, until it gets easier again.