writer's block

Writer's block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.

Causes of writer's block

Writer's block may have many causes. Some are essentially creative problems that originate within an author's work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration. A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author's experience or ability. (A fictional example can be found in George Orwell's novel Keep The Aspidistra Flying, in which the hero Gordon Comstock struggles in vain to complete an epic poem describing a day in London: "It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a series of fragments.") ^[1]

Other blocks, especially the more serious kind, may be produced by adverse circumstances in a writer's life or career: physical illness, depression, the end of a relationship, financial pressures, a sense of failure. The pressure to produce work may in itself contribute to a writer's block, especially if he is compelled to work in ways that are against his natural inclination, i.e. too fast or in some unsuitable style or genre, and he or she is not willing to adapt. In some cases, writer's block may also come from feeling intimidated by a previous big success, the creator putting on him/herself a paralyzing pressure to find something to equate that same success again. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert, reflecting on her post-bestseller prospects, proposes that such a pressure might be released by interpreting creative writers as "having" genius rather than "being" a genius [1]. In George Gissing's New Grub Street, one of the first novels to take writer's block as a main theme, the novelist Edwin Reardon becomes completely unable to write and is shown as suffering from all those problems. ^[2]

Recently, the writer and neurologist Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas. ^[3]

Notable blocked writers

Well-known writers who have suffered from block include George Gissing, Samuel Coleridge, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Mitchell and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Writers who overcame block and published new work after a hiatus of decades include Harold Brodkey, whose novel The Runaway Soul appeared some 30 years after it was first projected, and Henry Roth, whose first novel, Call It Sleep, was published in 1934; his second, Mercy Of A Rude Stream, did not appear until 1994.

Writer's block in Music

The album Black Clouds & Silver Linings by the progressive metal band Dream Theater contains a song called "Wither", which is about the fear of having writer's block suffered by the guitar player of the band John Petrucci. It is said that the songs in this album are about personal experiences.

Writer's block as depicted in other media

In works where writers appear as characters, writer's block has often been shown as part of the story.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with sourced additions.

• 8½
• Adaptation
• Ask the Dust
• Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
• Bag of Bones
• Barton Fink
• Californication
• Deconstructing Harry
• El Goonish Shive
• Finding Forrester
• George Lucas in Love
• I Capture the Castle
• JONAS
• Kaiyoppu
• Leaving Las Vegas
• October Road
• The Lost Weekend
• Masters of Horror: The Black Cat
• Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities
• Misery
• Muppet Babies (Season 6, Episode 09 "Romancing the Weirdo")
• Quills
• Read or Die
• Secret Window
• Sex and Lucia
• Shabd
• Shakespeare in Love
• Stranger than Fiction
• Swimming Pool
• Sylvia
• The Golden Notebook
• The Shining
• Throw Momma from the Train
• Woman on the Beach
• Wonder Boys

References

1. ^ George Orwell, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Chapter 2.
2. ^ George Gissing, New Grub Street.
3. ^ Joan Acolella, "Blocked: why do writers stop writing?, The New Yorker, June 14 2004.

External links

• Psychology of Writing & Revising