Grumble - I'll Think of the Title Last

-by Elfpants

I am, despite what you see of my output here, a working, professional writer. I've even got the HWA¹ annual dues request to prove it, along with a royalty statement that proves that people to whom I am not related actually bought my first novel.

And as such, I have resolved that the next time I read an essay or novel about a writer who suffers from writer's block but who eventually realizes it's a heartwarming, transformative experience, I'm going to do something about it. More specifically, I'm going to find the author in question and go to work on his toes with a sturdy, yet easily transportable hammer. Then I'm going to find every reviewer and fellow author who blurbed the novel in question as a "masterful insight into the author's art" and do the same to them. Twice.

Writer's block, you see, is not fun. It is not transformative, it is not illuminating and most of all, it's lousy fodder for writing. It may be interesting to discuss if you no longer are relying on your writing for a living and thus have the time to waste "researching" the subject by sticking your creative thumb up your figurative ass, but for those of us on deadline writer's block is a huge pain in the posterior.

Mostly, writer's block consists of the following:

Writer types something.
Writer deletes what writer has just written.
Writer gets up and walks around to "clear his head."
Writer sits back down, types another sentence, and deletes it.
Writer goes for the scotch.

Later, rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. In later iterations, some authors prefer to cut to the chase and go straight for the scotch, on the theory that A)Faulker wrote prolifically while he was hammered, and B)it saves time, if not money.

Now, it is true that while in the throes of writer's block, an author generally does ask himself questions. However, these are rarely the existential, soul-searching questions that Oprah-themed "luminous prose" would have you believe are the stock in trade of the struggling artiste. Never have I taken the opportunity whilst creatively stoppered to ask myself, "Who am I?" or "What service to the universe does my deathless prose perform?" It's more like "Can I beg a two-week extension out of the editor?" or "Will I get lynched if I come in under word count?" or, most often, "I wonder if working food service is more economically viable on a per-hour basis?" None of these is a good source of drama, save to an editor who's hanging on my delivery because the layout department is breathing down his neck for my copy.

Part of the problem, of course, is the over-romanticized role ascribed to the writer by those who do not write, and which writers themselves are fond of perpetuating. This stereotype portrays the writer as a tortured genius, from whose fingers flow the very stylings of the muses in one unstoppable, effortless torrent of deathless prose. This is, of course, bullpuckey. Writing is as much craft as art, and the writer who sits around waiting for the thunderbolt to strike is better off standing in a field holding up a golf club in the rain. Time and deadlines do not wait for inspiration to strike, and there are times when you just need to hammer out words and hope that you can gussy them up in the rewrites.

However, the one-swell-foop notion of writing does serve one useful purpose, namely, it does a marvelous job of scaring off would-be writers who are convinced that their bottles will never hold lightning². This provides a little job security for writers (who are by nature a paranoid and competitive lot) and also allows them to drive up their fees in negotiations with anyone besides editors and agents, who know better.

On the other hand, there's the school of thought that says that a writer should be able to generate prose anywhere, any time because by gum, it's our job to do so. This school of thought is primarily espoused by two groups: editors and old-time veterans of the game, who gather at conventions to sit in the corner, drink heavily and reminisce about how in the good ol' days, they churned out 10,000 words a day³ on manual typewriters for an editor who'd pay you in knotted beadwork and gruel. While there is a certain charm to the notion of writer-as-noir-character, one needs only look at what happens to most noir protagonists to see where this model leads.

The truth, I've found, lies somewhere in between. Like anyone else, writers need a comfortable work environment to produce their best. When they do produce, it can be with wild inspiration, but at the very least, you want to be in a position where you can plod along and at least make your word count with long-living, if not deathless, prose.

And that's where writer's block comes in. Ultimately, it's a snarling, spitting announcement that you can't do your job. And since everyone in the world views your job as easy -- after all, anyone who's ever hoisted a folding chair for the WWF has written a book slightly longer than a bus ride to Taos -- you internalize the contempt for someone who can't perform the simple task of writing. That's when you start spending your mental energy on beating yourself up for not being able to write, which means that you don't have any left for writing, and, well, you know how it goes from there.

It is actually possible to deal with writer's block. The most common approach is to lay down the offending project for a while and pick up another one. I, for example, stopped working on a frustrating attempt at a novel after six consecutive nights of writing yielded 40 usable words⁴, and instead started an essay on writer's block. Mind you, I got blocked halfway through this and started working on something entirely different, but at least I was typing something. Other writers prefer simply to take a break from writing altogether, or to grind on relentlessly, confident that sooner or later the dam has to burst⁵.

For my part, I'm not sure about these other approaches. One of the first things I was taught was that a writer writes. The words have to keep flowing, or sooner or later you're just not writing anymore. If you've got writer's block, it's your subconscious telling you that you're not ready to handle this particular assignment and if you can't do it, you can't do it. That may change tomorrow; it may change in five minutes; it may never change. But until it does, you are in for many non-illuminating, non-transformative, non-useful hours of sitting on your thumbs and cursing. Sometimes, that's just how it goes⁶.

1. Horror Writers Association, or, as it is known in some circles, "Hardly Writing Anymore."

2. The real thing that should scare off would-be writers is how bloody hard the whole process is. In my time as a line editor at a genre publisher, I found that a great many people want "to have written," i.e. they want their idle noodlings to appear, fully formed, on the page, without any of the actual labor of writing. When challenged to put their money where their mouths are and actually produce a few thousand words on spec, the vast majority of "I could do better" kvetchers either melt back into the woodwork, flake, or turn in unlovely drek of the literary quality normally found in Penthouse Forum.

3. Not "10,000 good words." "10,000 words." There is a difference.

4. At that rate, it would take me approximately 13,500 days - roughly 37 years - to complete the novel. Which, incidentally, is the first book of a trilogy. God help anyone waiting for the sequel.

5. Because if it doesn't, the writer probably will, and that would just be ugly. Writers, as a whole, are not a svelte lot.

6. I wish I had a better ending. Unfortunately, this one took two hours to come up with, and I don't have the time to spend on a better one. Irony, thou art omnipresent. Bastard.