But Writer’s Block
Your “block” didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a boulder you rolled in front of your own mind. Roll it away with minimum baselines, celebrating small wins, and learning to love academic writing. Keep reading to learn more or click here to listen to the podcast.
The Only Way Out is Through
As always, this installment of Love, Academic Writing comes to you from the Lee, a tenure track academic, and Allison, an academic-exile-turned-whistleblower-turned-dev-editor. Together, we are the Love Writing Doctors and we welcome you to our inaugural, originary, germinal, preeminent, cardinal installment of the Love, Academic Writing blog (that is also a podcast).
We are looking at everyone’s favorite writing excuse: BUT WRITER’S BLOCK!! We love what James Baldwin says about writer’s block:
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.
The truth is, there is no writer’s block. There’s no block or brick or boulder out there that a person or life event has rolled in front of your writing cave preventing all of your brilliance from spilling onto the page. Writer’s block just feels that way. Why? First, because we all sanction that excuse way too often. Tell another academic writer that you have writer’s block and you’ll get a sympathetic nod. Maybe even some, “ugh, tell me about it.” But we’re doing each other a disservice. Because it’s circular reasoning. And circular reasoning is ALWAYS terrible.
The only way to break circular reason is to find an insertion point in the circle where you just tell yourself (and the people complaining in your faculty meeting), “yeah, no.” Just because we all say writer’s block exists doesn’t make it true. In fact, many of the best writer’s would call straight bu**t on writer’s block. Audre Lorde and Eve Sedgwick both wrote until they day they died from cancer and certainly they had days when the creative ideas weren’t just flying. They wrote anyway. Because the only way out is through.
But the rest of us mortals may find that’s a little easier said than done. So if you’re still stuck in your circular reasoning trap, try paying more attention to your thoughts about writing. You’ll probably find (like we have) that on the micro level you’re not just thinking “I have writer’s block” over and over again. You’re thinking sentences like:
- I’m not prioritizing writing in my life
- I want to justify my inaction/laziness
- I don’t now what I’m trying to say
- This essay is a mess
- I’m never going to figure this out
In the end, the phrase “writer’s block” is just the way we abstractly label our thoughts and feelings about writing and it isn’t helping us. The “block” metaphor is hard and seems unmovable. It says “abandon hope all ye who enter here.” You need a better approach. You need…
Cognitive But(t) Therapy
Yup. Through our definitely not patented technique of Cognitive But(t) Therapy, we’ll talk about how to re-frame your relationship to writing where your But(t)s are not the awkward middleman getting in your way. Keep reading or click here to listen to the podcast.
Cognitive But(t) Therapy is a riff off the real psychology of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but geared towards writers whose buts keep getting in their own damn way. It’s time to therapize ya but(t)s! And of course, discuss what it means to love academic writing.
It starts with not beating the shit out of yourself for not writing. Whether it’s been a week or a month or even years, ruminating about wasted time just wastes more time. And what did we just say about circular reasoning? Also, don’t tell yourself lies like “I don’t have time” (when you do) or “I’ll just catch up this weekend” (when you won’t). Tell yourself the truth, “I’m choosing not to write, like I said I would, and I accept all of the crappy consequences that come with it.” Instead, do this:
- Establish a minimum baseline. For example, Lee’s minimum baseline prior to March 2022 was write 10 minutes Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That was it. Got a book and two peer reviewed essays published on that schedule. Allison, who is a super-human, writes four hours most days of the week.
- Listen to your thoughts. Find out what you actually think about writing. write them down. evaluate them.
- Reevaluate your minimum baseline. Chances are, your minimum baseline is too dang high. That’s what Lee discovered mid-2022 when that a minimum baseline of ten-minutes-three-times-a-week simply was not working. Something had to change because it’s only a minimum baseline if it is the minimum you will do. (Pro tip: if you’re not doing it, it isn’t the minimum.) Realizing that the minimum baseline is a moving target, Lee scaled back to just one sentence Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Just one sentence. It doesn’t have to be good. Turns out, that wasn’t minimum enough though. A few more weeks and even one sentence wasn’t enough. So it went lower: download an article to my tablet, lie in bed with coffee, and read for a few minutes Tuesday, Thursdays, Saturdays. That became the new minimum baseline.
- Every time that minimum baseline gets hit, celebrate it. Even if it’s just reading in bed on your tablet. It’s going to feel ridiculous. You’re going to think it’s silly, not good enough, lazy, whatever. When that happens. Remind yourself:
Consistent half-assing is ALWAYS better than inconsistent full-assing
The only thing that isn’t good enough is doing nothing…and then blaming it on writer’s block.
Want more Cognitive But(t) Therapy? Follow the Love, Academic Writing blog on Medium and the podcast over on Substack or your favorite podcast app.