Here Are a Few Quick Suggestions
For Blasting Through Writer's Block

I've only mentioned Linkedin once before, but perhaps will be referring to it more often in coming months. I call it the Facebook for adult professionals, though I recognize that many (including many of my friends and colleagues) swear by it for social networking. But my tool of choice (along with this blog, naturally, which is the crown jewel of it all) is Linkedin, which facilitates all sorts of things, including widening my circle of friends, readers and collaborators. One of the many features I like about it is the way it empowers peer learning, which is generally the best kind. I occasionally answer questions from strangers about subjects I know a little about, and other times I read answers from those who know far more than I do about various topics. After I answered one about how to deal with writer's block (naturally a recurring topic there, as well as here), it occurred to me I ought to post it here as well.

I think writer's block is generally a result of one of two things: either having nothing to say (in which case, why bother writing? An existential question without any real answer) or (far more often) being frozen by having too much to say, only having it all scattered throughout your brain. Too many writers try to figure it all out in their brains before downloading it onto a screen or a page, which I think is generally their main problem. To get started, you just need to start writing, without worrying about what order it's all in, or how good it is in the first draft. As long as you get something down initially, it's always MUCH easier to go back and revise and improve, once you have something to revise. It's going from nothing to even the sketchiest something that's generally the problem. So simply begin somewhere, and you'll feel steadily more encouraged to keep at it once you've begun.

There are a bunch of tried and true methods of breaking through a block: beginning with an outline composed only of a few bullet points, which you can then begin putting in the right order, and from there expand upon, until you have the beginnings of a piece of writing. Others find they can tune up their brains and typing fingers by reading something else first (though plenty of writers don't want to have another writer's voice in their head when they sit down to do their own writing). Yet others swear by listening to music to get them in the mood, or (my favorite) perhaps going for a run or even a brisk walk to get oxygen flowing to the brain. Whatever works for you, find what that is and do it. Pretty soon your writing brain will become accustomed to the routine, and know it's time to write. Dedicating the same time each day to writing further helps the brain develop that muscle memory. It may take you years, but perhaps only a few months to really get mentally toned.

Lastly, just about all prolific writers have a large and ever-growing storehouse of material from which to draw when they sit down to write, which also is a big part of breaking through any block. If you're in the habit of jotting down stray ideas as they come to you, collecting interesting articles, stray pieces of dialogue you hear in conversations, on TV, in movies, etc., or making notes on a vivid statistic you read or heard on NPR, you may soon have an overstuffed writing room groaning with files and scraps of paper, but you'll also begin magically (or not so magically) finding that writer's block has become a distant memory. Good luck!
(for earlier mentions of this subject, you can go here. And if you're a reader, don't forget to connect with me on Linkedin, should the spirit move you. If you're not already using it, do give it some thought).

Trying to Understand
the Ever-Elusive Source
Of Writing Compulsion

There are several books on and about writing that have rightly been installed in the informal canon, and which I think belong on any ambitious writer's bookshelf. I'll try to post my list sometime soon, which I hope will spark a dialogue from readers that will sharpen, add to and perhaps omit from my list. But of course that list is always in flux, and one recent addition is a book that's far less well-known than some, but which I think belongs in that canon, The Midnight Disease--The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, by Alice Flaherty, a neurologist. It's full of tremendous insights into the sources of creativity and the compulsion to write. Flaherty writes that her drive to understand the neurological sources of creativity and the writing impulse are more a result of an accident she had (she was hit by a truck) than the fact that she makes her living from understanding the human brain. She writes in the introduction that "I wrote this book to try to explain to myself what had erupted in (or into) my brain to turn me, almost against my will, into a writer." You can learn more about her by reading this interview. And below, with apologies to the author and her publisher, are some excerpts that I found especially interesting.

"One group of studies by Alice Brand provides evidence that writing, at least on personally chosen subjects, satisfies some urge and has measurable mood efffects. In both students and professional writers, the act of writing both intensified positive emotions and blunted negative ones. This outcome was something of a surprise to researchers in the field of composition studies, as the standard view of writing emphasizes the anxiety induced in students by writing assignments. The findings were consistent with what has been described by many writers, from hypergraphic patients to Joyce Carol Oates, who said, 'I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhuasted, when I've felt my soul as thin as playing cards....and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.' Ernest Hemingway saw Oates's half-full glass as half empty: 'when I don't write, I feel like shit.' Some writers, such as the poet Tina Kelley, describe a physical sensation of unease or restlessness that torments them if they haven't written for a few days. For others, it is a sort of headache, a stuffy, swollen brain. Milton described feeling like a cow that needs to be milked. For many, there is the primal conviction that they should not do anything but write--because it is their vocation, in a nearly religious sense. Writing is what they were meant to do, and the headaches and the restlessness are their body's rebellion when it is kept from fulfilling its destiny."

* * * * * * * *

"How does writing differ from speech? Writing is harder, and more culturally dependent. Nearly everyone learns to speak but in many countries almost no one learns to write. Even in the United States, with its universal public education, 10 percent of adults are functionally illiterate and write at less than a sixth-grade level. Why? Writing is not obviously a more complex task than speech. If anything, the much greater speed at which speech is produced and deciphered, the smaller territory allotted to auditory than visual processing in the brain, and the contortions of the tiny larynx should create even more of a challenge than writing. One argument has it that writing is more difficult for humans because it is evolutionarily recent, not hardwired the way speech seems to be."

* * * * * * * *

"Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to. Another difference between amateur and professional writers, almost by definition, is that the latter more successfully engage their audience. It is partly a question of skill, but more often a matter of goals. Amateur writers tend to write primarily for self-expression, whereas writers able to become professional can hide or transform their own agendas enough so that they are of interest to others."

* * * * * * * *

"Many of the classic symptoms of depression are also classic symptoms of writer's block: increased self-criticism; decrease in enjoyment of the project; loss of energy, imagination, and the ability to concentrate. And most depression directly disrupts a writer's motivation to write. Because depression is not only a mental state but also a brain state that is at least partially understood, what we know about depression can serve as a window on the neurological basis of some types of writer's block."

* * * * * * * *

"Writing is one of the supreme human achievements. No, why should I be reasonable? Writing is the supreme achievement. It is by turns exhilarating and arduous, and trying to write obsesesses and distresses students, professional writers, and diarists alike. Writers explain why they write (and have trouble writing) one way; freshman composition teachers, another; literary critics and psychiatrists and neurologists have increasingly foreign explanations. These modes of thinking about the emotions that surround writing do not easily translate into one another. But one fact is always true: the mind that writes is also the brain that writes. And the existence of brain states that affect our creativity raises questions that make us uneasy. What is the relation between mind and body? What are the sources of imagination?"

Just Keep Playing Your Scales

This week's New Yorker, the annual fiction issue, has a fascinating essay on a subject near and dear to the heart of many writers: writer's block. Written by the magazine's dance writer, Joan Acocella, it thus becomes perhaps the first of her pieces I've ever read (sorry, but I don't do dance, and I don't do much fiction either--if you don't count anything by Richard Ford, Paul Theroux, Mark Twain or Henry James).

But do read this piece if you get a chance--it's a treat. Acocella delivers up a nice compact narrative history of "artistic inhibition," concluding that writer's block is a largely American phenomenon, which society has come to assign a kind of "bleak dignity." And of course our therapeutic culture coupled with our Amway-snake-oil-salesman underbelly gives rise to products designed to cure what ails us. She mentions a guy who sells tapes (for the low, low price of just $77) designed to help one blast through their blockage. One of his suggestions: repeating to yourself such affirmations as "I am a richly talented writer." That oughta work every time. Hell, I could sell advice like that for a lot less...

In the end, I think she gets it right when she raises the possibility that a philosopher named Ian Hacking is correct about how once you invent a category, people have a way of fitting themselves into it. "Possibly, some writers become blocked simply because the concept exists, and invoking it is easier for them than writing."

In the end, professional writers know that rookies overvalue inspiration and undervalue perspiration. If you condition the mind, fingers and especially your rear end to sit in a place every day and write, you will write. It may not be as elegant as Shakespeare and it may not get published, but at least you won't have writer's block to blame. Of course, there is always one other possibility, an obvious one that too many people overlook: you may not have anything much to say. In which case, put your pen or your PC away, and get back to it when you do. Or even better yet, stick it out and get in the habit of downloading thoughts from brain to page, and eventually you'll have something.

But let me bring in to the discussion a couple of writers whom Acocella doesn't mention but who I think have something valuable to add. Bonni Goldberg, in Beyond Words, argues that "the only true obstacle to writing creatively is a lack of faith that appears as fear and self-judgment." I've said it before: writers have to stubbornly ignore those negative, rule-laden voices of their seventh-grade English teachers, who were probably non-writers, and who taught that writing is merely comprised of mastering the rules of English composition and grammar. Instead, the way we learn to write is to read, and then to try it ourselves, and finally to seek guidance and advice from other writers. That's it. Goldberg also helpfully talks about the different cycles of the writing process--percolation, revision (rewriting) and going public (publication or other forms of sharing it with readers). And percolation of course is key. I've always said that we need to read about one million words before we can ourselves write a sentence worth reading. And no matter how experienced or accomplished you might be or how long you've been at writing, if you stop reading everything and learning everything you can from your environment, you'll also be affected in your own writing.

But let's give an old master the last word on this father's day, shall we? Gruff old Norman Mailer, who has sat his ass down in the chair for many decades of toil, has understandably been dismissive of the sillier aspects of the aspiring writer industry. When asked once at a public event where he finds his inspiration, he unsmilingly shot back "It finds me."

He expands a bit on the theme in The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. "There may be too much of a tendancy among young intellectuals to thing that if one can develop a consciousness, if one is able to brood sensitively and incisively on one's own life, and on the life of others for that matter, one will be able to write when the time comes. That assumption, however, may not recognize sufficiently that the ability to put words on a page also comes through years of experience and can become a skill nearly separate from consciousness and bear more resemblance to the sophisticated instincts of fingers that have been playing scales for a decade."

Writer's Block is Just a Con Game

‘Americans do not write for many reasons. One big reason is the writer’s struggle. Too many writers talk and act as if writing were slow torture, a form of procreation without arousal or romance—all dilation and contraction, grunting and pushing. As New York sportswriter Red Smith once observed, ‘Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.’ The agony in Madison Square Garden. If you want to write, here’s a secret: the writer’s struggle is overrated, a con game, a cognitive distortion, a self-fulfilling prophecy, the best excuse for not writing. ‘Why should I get writer’s block?’ asked the mischievous Roger Simon. ‘My father never got truck driver’s block.’

--from the introduction to Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools—50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.

The Real Sources of Writer's Block,
According to One Veteran Scribbler

'The fear of writing badly, of revealing something you would rather keep hidden, of losing the good opinion of the world, of violating your own high standards, or of discovering something about yourself that you would just as soon not know--those are just a few of the phantoms scary enough to make the writer wonder if there might be a job available washing skyscraper windows.'
--From Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer--A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them. Not long ago, we featured Ms. Prose here. To review earlier explorations of writer's block, go here, here, here, here, here and here.

Do You Have it All Backwards?

'You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.'

--novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. We happen to think this is the real source of much so-called writer's block: people enthralled with the idea of writing, but without anything urgent to say. In any case, you can review earlier mentions of the reigning sage of the Jazz Age here.

We're Serving Holiday Leftovers

Items Left Over From the Holiday Season. If you're like most people, you tend to be in the giving spirit at year's end. But how about the rest of the year? For Cleveland-area readers, here's a good list of nonprofits and their various needs. While it was published last month, I'm guessing these organizations are just as much in need now as they were during the lead-up to the holiday season. And for those of you hyperorganized enough to begin thinking about next Christmas, if there are indeed any such animals out there, here are a couple of gift guides worth checking out (please note that all I really need for Christmas is this fun little toy to keep me occupied during bouts of writer's block). Finally, this interesting piece explores some of Charles Dickens' holiday stories that have tended to get a little lost in the glare of his enduring monster hit, A Christmas Story.

Michelle Marks Her Tenth Anniversary in Style. Michelle O'Neil, a newish Clevelander and a blogger of my recent acquaintance, turns her blog over to her husband for a note about their tenth anniversary, and then touchingly writes about it herself. Congratulations, Michelle and Todd. While you're over at her place, you might as well also check out this nice riff about how the first "chapter book" she ever read as a child turned Michelle on to lifelong reading. Isn't that how it works for most of us? Sometime soon, I'll take her cue, and tell you about the book that did it for me as a kid, back in Depression-era dustbowl Oklahoma (just kidding about time and place). I'll be eager to hear your stories as well. So thanks for the great idea, Michelle.

I'm Glad at Least One Bulldog Reporter Hasn't Forgotten Cheney. Newsweek's Ace Investigator Mike Isikoff, a name you may remember from le affair Lewinsky, keeps digging on the crucial story of how the Veep and his henchmen have systematically subverted the Constitution. Most of the rest of the media has clearly moved on to newer, fresher outrages. But this one is the gift that keeps giving for those with the attention span to keep at it. And Isikoff is as tenacious and untiring as anyone, famously walking away from the Washington Post in a huff when the paper refused to run one of his tougher pieces, and decamping to its sister publication. Take a bow, Mr. I.

It's Nice to Be Noticed. Former Plain Dealer reporter Bill Sloat, who apparently decided to use some of his severance pay from the staff buyout/downsizing to found the blog The Daily Bellwether, gets this nice tip of the hat from popular Slate media columnist Jack Shafer. It's well-deserved recognition. And here's a public thanks to Bill for having recently added this blog to his links.

The Rest of the Story with Leona's Parting Gifts. Not long ago, the media was awash in stories about how the late "Queen of Mean," Leona Helmsley, left a bequest of several million dollars to her pooch. But the always-interesting Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that her total bequests to charity, about $4 billion, landed her in the top spot of charitable givers this year. That may not be quite as titillating a story as giving your dog a few million bucks, but it would be hard to argue that it's a story not worth adding to the Leona files. But I've yet to see it picked up anywhere else.

NYT Book Blog Calls in Reinforcements. The writer behind the New York Times' popular Paper Cuts blog congratulates himself for his 250th post, and then announces that henceforth he'll be getting some help, as the blog turns into a group effort. He also writes this interesting riff on the mixed blessings of feeding the hungry beast that is any good blog. "Writing Paper Cuts has been, lo this past five or six months, great fun and a great, interesting mental derangement - it’s been a bit like taking in an outsize, very friendly stray dog, one that begs for food two or three times a day, sheds on your furniture, slobbers on your best shoes and dumps on the lawn. All in, fundamentally, a good way." That sounds about right.

Writing as Muscle Memory:
Here's the Table of Contents

Here's the table of contents (at least at the moment) for that book I mentioned last week that's currently in production, Writing as Muscle Memory: 35 Things You Can Begin Doing Today To Tone Your Writing Muscles And Hone Your Craft. A special thanks to Art, Tina and Maria for the beginnings of a very lively and interesting discussion about the intro. Even more grist for my mill, folks.

Getting Started
Read Everything
Write Everything
Ignore Most of What Your Seventh-Grade English Teacher Said
Make Yourself a Business Card
Find a Trusted Reader
Start Small

What Comes Next
Turn that Damned TV Off
Find a Mentor (or Two)
Start a Blog
Write Every Day
Worry About Publishing Later
Don’t Throw Anything Away!
Just Stop and Tell Me What You Want to Say
Forget About Writer’s Block–Just Start Anywhere
Or, Make an Outline
Get Yourself to a Conference
Write About What Really Matters to You
Write About What You Know—Or Care Enough About to Investigate
Build a Stockpile
Get Used to It: You’ll Have to Pay Your Dues

Taking It Up a Notch
Remember: Less is More
Put Your Writing on a Diet
Mentor Another Writer
Lose Yourself in a Poetry Collection
Study the Dictionary for Concise Writing
Read it Aloud
Find Yourself a Support Group
Make Yourself a Writing Portfolio
Learn to Listen to Your Mind/Body Rhythms

When You’re Really Cooking
Profile Someone You Know
Profiles Someone You’ve Never Met
Begin Tackling Essays
Try Your Hand at Travel Writing
Try Something Completely Different
Teach Others to Write

One Thousand Good Words at Panera

To mark the occasion of the latest National Book Awards (more about which here) as well as National Novel Writing Month, NPR did a nice package around how some of the book award finalists practice their craft. Nancy Werlin, a writer of young adult novels, described her typical day:

How She Writes: "Lately, it's been the following:
1) Get to a Panera Bread cafe sometime in the morning.
2) Order large decaf skim latte.
3) Skulk or pounce to get possession of table near electrical outlet.
4) Plug in, boot up and immediately download email using Panera's free wireless access.
5) Waste time on email and web.
6) Finally open file containing novel-in-progress and get to work.
7) Write until lunchtime.
8) Pack up computer, use bathroom, get in line for lunch.
9) Obtain lunch, attempt and fail to reclaim table near electrical outlet, settle for other table and run off battery.
10) Eat lunch while answering email.
11) Return to work writing, eyeing the Daily Goal: 1,000 good words.

Writer's Block Remedies: "I tell myself that all I need to do is open the file and work for 15 minutes. Or ten. Or five."
A Favorite Sentence: "In the end, the survivor gets to tell the story."

By the way, if you're looking for a recommendation from that winner's list, I think you can't go wrong by trying Timothy Egan's book on the dustbowl. While I haven't read it (yet), I'm familiar with some of his other work, which is uniformly excellent. And the subject seems like something he can sink his teeth into. If you do read it (or any of the others for that matter) and have a reaction you'd care to share with the rest of us, by all means please do.

A Solid Month of Writing

The writer Anne Lamott is famous in some quarters for her suggestion on how to break through writer's block. "Just write a shitty first draft," she counsels, on the theory that once you have something to begin shaping, polishing and improving, everything gets easier. This month, thousands of writers are taking part in National Novel Writing Month, a group effort in diligently breaking through blocks by writing at least 50,000 words. My friend Jeff Hess is one of those taking part. I'm looking forward to his report on how it went. Meanwhile, this fine Washington Post article explains what it's all about. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a town with a paper that was all over this kind of story? I'm afraid that'll only happen if I move.

One Writer's Nostalgia for Former Subjects

'The pile of old newspapers and magazines sat weathered and dusty on my office floor. It was hard not to notice them when you entered the room, yet I managed to block them from my peripheral vision for more than two months. Once our two new kittens began to use the pile of reading material as a bed, however, I knew it was time to do something. There aren't many things worse than the smell of newspapers on which almost-totally-trained cats have lounged.The reason I'd been putting off going through those old publications was simple and understandable, if you're a long-time writer, as I am. That seemingly annoying stack of slush represented ten years of my career...They dated between 1995 and 2005, and most of the articles I'd written for them had not been placed on the Internet. They existed only in ink...As I read through articles from several years ago, I recalled vivid details, not so much of the actual writing process, but of meeting the people and visiting the places described in the articles. There was the dad who painted a mural of the Wizard of Oz across all four walls of his daughter's bedroom, the florist whose dog liked to wear cool sunglasses while riding in the car and the homeowner who happily gave my two-month-old daughter a bottle while I jotted down notes about her living room. I remembered lugging an infant to interviews when I couldn't find a sitter, and the extremely considerate interviewees who never complained about the extra bundle at the interview. I recalled the quote from a longtime Browns fan who was selling off his extensive memorabilia: "When I got married, I told my wife the Browns come first on Sundays. As you get older, you realize it's not that important." I can see myself sitting in the home of two prominent lawyers, who welcomed me in as though they had all the time in the world to talk with me.The articles reminded me of the people I'd met and the kindnesses they'd offered me. I thought about the joys and sorrows they shared with me, the way they confided in me as though I was a good friend and how thrilled they were to read about themselves, their business or their home in a publication.'
--From my friend Diane DePiero's recent blog post. Veteran writers will recognize the way she fondly recalls former subjects of her writing.