The Five Stages of ‘Grief’
“You don’t ever have a day where you sit down there and it’s like constipation?” — George RR Martin to Stephen King, 2018.
Everyone has been through the five stages of grief. *Cough* Writer’s Block: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We grief for the loss of time and creativity to write. Don’t worry, I’ve been there.
Some people see me frustrated and angry. And when they ask, “What’s wrong?”
I’d cry and go, “I need to daydream some more!!”
No joke. I’d be sleeping all day trying to think, but most of the time, I either get blanks or dreaming about Dungeons and Dragons. Then before I know it, I’ve wasted half my day not coming up with anything.
And then, the five stages of grief happen.
1) Denial
The very first stage of grief. You are in shock after procrastinating and finding out you wasted your whole day doing Netflix & chill, or streaming Youtube all day long. You are trying your best to convince yourself that procrastinating is alright. After all, you need to find ideas right? Researching won’t do you any good if you don’t even know what to research.
So what do we do when we are in denial? We tell ourselves that we still have time and what you are currently doing is fine. No one is going to die for it, right?
2) Anger
And then you realize that it’s not ok at all. You beat yourself up, get mad at your gut for pulling off a foolish thing. You hate how your creativity dumps you for another person, leaving your brain with nothing but your wit and emptiness. You grab the nearest object and threw it halfway across the room, hoping it’d get your creativity for leaving you with nothing.
3) Bargaining
This is when you realize that you don’t have enough time after all. You get mad at yourself, “Why didn’t I finish that??” or “Why didn’t I concentrate like Stephen King?” This time, your mind became a little more creative. By coming up with ‘what ifs’ for yourself. “What if I was more creative?”, or “What if I hadn’t been this lazy today?” and so on and so forth, telling yourself of the things you could’ve done. Thus, giving out false hope to yourself.
You came up with different scenarios and before you know it, you still haven’t got one sentence written.
4) Depression
Follows right after bargaining. You grieved for the loss of your precious time, that you finally had all the time in the world and you wasted them doing something else instead of writing and focusing on your real purpose. You think back of how much time you used to have, how much you could’ve done, and how you used to be able to do better than this. The sadness that punctured your heart because of Writer’s block.
5) Acceptance
Then you finally realize that you are back to square once again. Realizing that you still haven’t written a single thing because of your emotional toll, and once again, it’s alright. No one is going to die.
The Take:
Everyone has been here, so don’t feel bad. It’s a process everyone has been through.
