3 ms·

Claim: Writer's block is just a challenge that any profession or activity would face - getting stuck. I get stuck writing software or learning piano or vacuumin

Claim: Writer's block is just a challenge that any profession or activity would face - getting stuck. I get stuck writing software or learning piano or vacuuming my house. Convince me otherwise please. I want to learn what's different about this "Writer's block" that people keep talking about.

thecodrr 6y ago
To answer that, you need to answer whether writing is any different from coding, vacuuming, or learning piano. I code, and write, myself. I have also gotten stuck while coding (and writing). But I have never experienced "coder's block" with the same intensity and stubbornness as a "writer's block". However, this is solely my own experience.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
To some degree, I think the idea of "writer's block" helps perpetuate the issue. That's not to say people never get genuinely stuck, but we have this term -- writer's block -- to explain what is going on and we have all kinds of literature that affirms that it is something special, it is mystifying and has no known cause, etc. It helps enshrine it and helps instruct people to get wrapped around the axle about it and helps entrench the issue. I blog and I do freelance writing. I sometimes can't manage to write. I never label it "writer's block." I always have other explanations, such as lack of sleep or health issues. And it never becomes anything I'm anxious about or stuck on the idea of and I never wrestle with it in the way other people talk about. But I did a lot of therapy when I was younger, so I'm abundantly familiar with how and why I sometimes get what I think of as "The blue screen of death" for some issues. There are issues I have a history of getting really horribly stuck on in a way where trying desperately to fix it is part of the problem, so I'm familiar with that pattern and I just don't let it happen to my writing process. There's nothing about my writing process that merits getting that stuck in my mind. There's nothing about writing that merits angsting like that and making it into some big, huge deal that, at the moment, the words just won't come. I shrug. I do something else. The words will come again later. No big.

thecodrr 6y ago

To answer that, you need to answer whether writing is any different from coding, vacuuming, or learning piano. I code, and write, myself. I have also gotten stuck while coding (and writing). But I have never experienced "coder's block" with the same intensity and stubbornness as a "writer's block". However, this is solely my own experience.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

To some degree, I think the idea of "writer's block" helps perpetuate the issue. That's not to say people never get genuinely stuck, but we have this term -- writer's block -- to explain what is going on and we have all kinds of literature that affirms that it is something special, it is mystifying and has no known cause, etc. It helps enshrine it and helps instruct people to get wrapped around the axle about it and helps entrench the issue. I blog and I do freelance writing. I sometimes can't manage to write. I never label it "writer's block." I always have other explanations, such as lack of sleep or health issues. And it never becomes anything I'm anxious about or stuck on the idea of and I never wrestle with it in the way other people talk about. But I did a lot of therapy when I was younger, so I'm abundantly familiar with how and why I sometimes get what I think of as "The blue screen of death" for some issues. There are issues I have a history of getting really horribly stuck on in a way where trying desperately to fix it is part of the problem, so I'm familiar with that pattern and I just don't let it happen to my writing process. There's nothing about my writing process that merits getting that stuck in my mind. There's nothing about writing that merits angsting like that and making it into some big, huge deal that, at the moment, the words just won't come. I shrug. I do something else. The words will come again later. No big.