Writer’s Block: The Cure

When people talk about writer’s block, I often recall the opening scene from Throw Mama from the Train. Billy Crystal, a writing teacher struggling to pen his own masterpiece, is sitting at his typewriter at home.

He types, “The night was.”

Then he crumples the paper and throws it away. And over the course of the scene, he continues to trash papers on which he has only written a few words. He is searching for the perfect beginning.

(There is also the “Phantom of the Novel” part of the scene that demonstrates one possible side effect of spending hours alone in one’s study. I’ll leave that as a bonus for those who choose to watch the video.)

The scene is a parody, no doubt, but still it highlights some of the fallacies that people believe concerning inspiration. Inspiration is often thought of as being like a bolt of lightning: you don’t know when it may strike, but when it does, it’s sure to knock your socks off.

I often wonder if this thinking is partly to blame when writers talk about the so-called malady of “writer’s block.” It’s true that there are times, especially if we are under duress, when it can be extremely difficult or perhaps even impossible to write. The loss of a loved one may cause the words to dry up for weeks, months, maybe even years. Emotional anguish is certainly a legitimate reason for having difficulty writing.

But sometimes “writer’s block” is used as an excuse for laziness, distraction, or fear. We question whether our writing is good enough, or if we can ever do better than that last piece, or if maybe we should just find a “real” job and skip the chagrin of being proved a fraud. But in reality,

Writing is about expression, not perfection.

Truth, not cleverness.

Personality, not popularity.

The writer who spends hours trying to create a few perfect words instead of many suitable ones fails to understand his or her task. Writing is work (though sometimes there is magic involved). Even inspiration is work — it takes effort to put yourself in the right situation at the right time each day to make the most use of your mind.

Good writing relies on one unerring principle:

The more you work at your writing, the better both you and your writing will get.

If you hold back because you don’t think you have big enough ideas or clever enough words, that inspiration may never come. It’s the work of writing without inspiration that often causes the inspiration to come along later.

Real writing, by which I mean dedicated writing, involves good days and bad days, inspired days and uninspired ones, just like any other kind of job. If the words are not coming today, write anyway. Trust the process.

If you write the adequate words, sooner or later the excellent words will come. (Let’s leave out the word “perfect” altogether.)

All you have to do is work at it.