The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (2 page)

Project-Related Problems and Feelings.
You feel lost in your writing project, sick of it, overwhelmed by it, or alienated from it. Or, it feels boring or meaningless or futile. “Why do I even bother writing poetry when no one reads it any more?”

Fear of Failure or Success.
You are afraid the project will fail, or afraid of the consequences of success. E.g., “My novel will never get published, but even if it does, my family will hate the way I portrayed them.” Or, “This stupid grant will never get funded, and even if it does, I will hate working on the project.” (Yes, the seemingly mutually contradictory fears of failure and success often do manage to coexist nicely.)

Note that I’m not describing the intense terror of failure and success borne of perfectionism (Chapter 2), but a more rational fear of one or more likely outcomes of your efforts.

Resource Deficiencies.
The computer’s flaky, or the printer is. You lack information you need to proceed, or someone who was supposed to help hasn’t shown up.

Environmental Deficiencies.
Your writing space is too crowded and noisy—or too isolated and quiet. Or, your writing desk and chair are uncomfortable.

Workplace Problems.
(Specific to on-the-job writing.) Your workplace is poorly managed, chaotic, or abusive. This problem is far more common than most people realize, because even many “average” workplaces are dysfunctional. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be productive when surrounded by dysfunction and chaos.

Boss Problems.
(Specific to on-the-job writing.) Boss is unorganized, inept, negligent, abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional. Also a more common barrier than most people realize.

Competing Priorities.
(On the job or with your own writing.) Other projects or people are clamoring for your attention. Or, perhaps there’s something else you’d rather be doing.

Emotional Distractions.
You’re distracted by feelings of sadness or fear related to your personal life. Or, maybe feelings of happiness. Happy is better, of course, but can still distract.

Physical Distractions.
You feel tired, sick, hungry, or hyper.

Geopolitical Problems.
You’re upset at, or otherwise distracted by, current events.

Emotional/Cognitive/Learning Issues.
You’ve got ADD or ADHD or another learning difference, or you suffer from depression or anxiety. These and similar conditions should be addressed promptly and with professional help, not simply because they are painful to live with, but because they can be huge barriers to productivity and success.

Five Key Lessons

There are five important things you need to know about the above list:

(1) All of the above barriers are totally, perfectly, 100% valid. It is perfectly legitimate, and even empowered, to not want to write when you’re tired, ill, sick of the project, distracted by personal or family or geopolitical problems, under-resourced, abused at work, etc. Procrastination is even an okay response to those circumstances—once in a while. But as you no doubt know since you are reading this book, it’s a terrible habitual response.

(2) The barriers are properly referred to as causes or reasons for not wanting to write—not excuses, complaints or whines. “Excuses,” etc., are moralistic labels that do little but foment guilt and shame, thereby further impeding our productivity (Section 2.7).

(3) It’s a long list, which tells us that our productivity is constantly under siege from many different directions.

(4) It’s important, when reviewing the list of barriers, to distinguish between those that are obstacles and those that are triggers. An obstacle is an activity or circumstance that competes with your writing for time and other resources, or that otherwise impedes your ability to write. Childcare, relationships, community work, illness (your own or someone else’s), a full-time job, and a deficient teacher, boss, or workplace are all obstacles. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be doing childcare and some of those other activities, by the way: only that they compete with your writing. Chapter 4, on time management, will give you the tools to balance competing priorities.

Triggers, in contrast, are feelings that interfere with your ability to write. Fear is the big one, not just because it tends to be intense and disabling but because writers take constant risks, with fear being a natural consequence (Section 6.4). Fear is so disabling, in fact, that it’s not surprising that one of the core differences between prolific
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and underproductive writers is that the former feel much less fear around their writing—and, quite often, no fear.

Shame, guilt, disappointment, and anxiety are also common triggers.

The line between “obstacle” and “trigger” is not clear cut: most obstacles invoke triggers, both directly from their own emotional content and secondarily from the guilt and shame that arise from underproductivity; and most triggers are caused at least partly by present or past obstacles. Also, people with triggers often create obstacles: for example, they get in time-consuming, destructive relationships or create too-full schedules that don’t allow time to write. Still, as you will see, the obstacle and trigger categories are useful for characterizing the complex causes of underproductivity, and can also point the way to solutions.

(5) Look at what’s not on the list: laziness, lack of discipline, lack of willpower, lack of commitment, etc. Once in a while—rarely, really—a student does mention one of these as a cause of not wanting to write, and when they do, I say, “Tell us why one would feel lazy around this project.” Then they promptly come up with one or more of the reasons listed above. This tells us that
laziness, lack of willpower, etc., are symptoms, and not causes, of underproductivity
—and, moreover, yet another set of moralistic labels that undermine us. One of the most important productivity techniques you can use—so important that I will be repeating it throughout this book—is to never apply labels such as “lazy” to yourself or anyone else.

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I use the word “prolific” to indicate someone writing at full capacity, according to their own measure. Everyone’s situation and objectives are different, and everyone’s writing capacity will thus differ. (And your own capacity will probably vary at different times!) Ditto for terms like “successful” and “underproductive”: their meanings relate not to some arbitrary measure but to what you achieve relative to your own goals.

T
he moralistic labels are always wrong—and yet don’t we constantly use them when we fall short of our goals or are underproductive? “What’s wrong with you?” we ask ourselves in a kind of self-abusive litany:

How can you be so lazy? Don’t you care about this project? Don’t you care about your own success? And after all those thousands you spent on a new computer and writing classes! A total waste. You really are a loser. Etc., etc.

And if you do somehow manage to bravely write in the midst of all that self-abuse, procrastination is nothing if not adaptable:

Is that the best you can do? Those sentences are terrible! Whoever told you you could write? What a waste of time. Might as well give up now.

I’ll have a lot more to say about the litany in Chapter 2. For now, let me just say that many writers have that obnoxious voice running through their heads more or less constantly. Sometimes it’s in the foreground of their thoughts, sometimes in the background, but if it’s in the background, it’s always ready to leap to the foreground the moment you decide to write, or the moment the writing doesn’t go well.

There’s one group of writers, however, who don’t indulge in the litany: the prolific. They understand that underproductivity is never caused by character flaws, but by disempowering obstacles and triggers from the eleven categories. And so they don’t waste time belittling themselves when they’re underproductive, but move promptly (automatically, really) into problem-definition and problem-solving modes:

From: “It’s 10:00 a.m. and I don’t feel like working on my novel.”

(Skipping: “What’s wrong with you? How can you be so lazy? Etc.”)

To problem definition: “Okay, so I don’t feel like writing—what’s going on? First of all, I’m sick to death of this chapter: I’ve been working on it forever and it’s still going nowhere. Also, I got really discouraged last night when that guy at the party told me that space-vampire novels were ‘out’ and I wouldn’t ever be able to get published. And, finally, I’m distracted because the phone keeps ringing and I can’t stop myself from Internet surfing!”

Followed by problem-solving: “Okay, let’s take those one at a time—easy stuff first. Starting right now, I’m going to shut off the phone every time I sit down to write. I’m also going to disconnect the Internet while I’m writing (Section 3.6). As for space vampires being ‘out,’ I’ve never heard anyone say that before so that was probably just that guy’s unfounded opinion. I’ll call my critique buddy (Section 3.11) and see what she thinks. I know she’ll tell me to ignore the guy and just focus on having fun with my book. And in the future, I’ll avoid talking to that guy about my work. He sounded so sure of himself and that caught me off guard, but he’s not in publishing—he doesn’t even read much!—so how does he know anything?

“As for being sick to death of the chapter, why don’t I just set it aside and work on another one (Section 5.4)—maybe that fun one where the characters are all partying in Antarctica! Or, I could journal about the problems I’m having, or start it over from scratch.”

Here’s how that process looks graphically: 

Three ways to respond to a barrier.

Because the prolific person is focused on problem-solving instead of remorse and self-recrimination, she will typically either, (a) recover quickly from obstacles and triggers, or (b) not even perceive them in the first place! (She will automatically and almost reflexively unplug the phone and Internet, dismiss the obnoxious guy’s comment, etc.) Some problems, of course, take longer than others to solve, even for adept problem-solvers. What we can safely say is that the prolific tend to solve their problems in less time—and usually, much less time—than procrastinators, many of whom tend to do more dithering (unproductive worrying, complaining, etc.) than actual solving. (The reason for that will become clear in Section 1.8).

Procrastinators, in contrast, follow path (c), where the initial obstacle or trigger launches another powerful trigger: panic about the possibility of failure. That’s bad enough, as panic pretty much obliterates your ability to solve problems, but the “solution” the procrastinator then employs to try to get back on track makes things far worse: it’s the self-abusive litany, which she uses in a desperate attempt to shame or terrify herself back into writing. Unfortunately, that litany not only leaves her even more defeated and disempowered, but also escalates her terror to the point that she needs to escape—and procrastination provides the easiest route for doing so.

All this can happen in a flash the moment you encounter a problem with your writing, and it can even happen the moment you contemplate writing. You have probably been procrastinating for decades, after all, and so both your fears and your escapist response to them are pretty well ingrained.

The use of shame and coercion as motivational tools, even on yourself, is not just immoral, but futile. They yield not growth and evolution, but, at best, short-term compliance. They also sabotage the creative process.
Related problems with bullying are that: (1) we inevitably come to resent the bully, even if it happens to be us ourselves (Section 1.11), and (2) we become habituated to bullying, so that over time it loses its effectiveness. (The first time you get scolded for missing a deadline it’s horrible; the tenth time, not so bad.)

It’s not surprising you would turn to bullying to solve your procrastination problem, because our culture—and especially our media—relentlessly promotes that approach (Section 2.8). But the true solutions are all based on compassion and nonviolence.

I
n the previous section, I discussed how prolific writers solve problems much more quickly than underproductive ones—in some cases, not even perceiving a problem as a problem. This is particularly true of many of the ordinary problems that afflict writers. A prolific writer is not going to waste time if her computer is flaky, her workspace distracting, or she’s feeling discouraged; she’s going to solve the problem as soon as possible so she can get back to work.

The prolific, in other words, have the gift of perceiving mountains as molehills—only it’s usually not a gift, but something they have learned over time. (Some lucky writers learn it early on from enlightened parents or teachers.) Moreover, the prolific know that
the best strategy is to minimize the possibility of obstacles and triggers to begin with
, and so they take steps to do that. Specifically, they: