The Foggy Delusion of Writer's Block

Staying disciplined to write is never easy. In fact, it can be downright torturous. Personally, even though it's what I love to do, I also find it easier to absolutely loathe it. I hate it so much that I have to set a timer every night reminding me to write and even then, sometimes I hit ignore, toss my phone across the room, and carry on with another hour of Diablo II on my p.c. Who would have known that I'd succumb to the blank-screen writer's block syndrome--even as I write this post? To be honest, the segment of this post that you've been reading up to this point was written at a separate time because I was so stuck and frustrated about what I was going to say that I closed my laptop, put my boots on, and went for a walk on the wetlands behind my apartment. Opening the door, a pale, gray fog was rising from the cold bogs, ponds, and puddles across the rolling hills, creating a stifling veil over the pastoral landscape and I felt it was a poignant reminder of the futility of my own failures as a writer when I sit and stare and not a single idea--not even a word--can muster an appearance on the pallid page before me.

As pervasive as this annoying, gray cloud is as it hangs over my own writing endeavors, it's not a syndrome that's unique to me. In fact, according to a 2016 survey conducted by journalist Laura Brown, 78% of writers said they had experienced some kind of writer's block. Oddly enough, causation of the stifled creativity was not discussed, but digging into it a little further, I discovered another study done by Dr. Mike Rose suggesting that this creative constipation is affected by one's setting, the content matter being undertaken, and the time allotted to complete the task (Rose 26-41).

Interestingly enough, as complex as the issue of writer's block seems to get made out to be--the research, the conversation about causation--I find myself, as a writer, largely focused on how to remedy it. Before discovering how to remedy it, I wanted to know whom has a remedy for it. So, I stopped over by one of the larger puddles on the wetland, fished out my phone, and perused the web, looking for worldly, writerly wisdom on the topic. I stumbled across hundreds of responses of famous authors from legendary, world-greats like George Orwell to modern masters such as Stephen King, and many responses from writers in between who have weighed in on the subject, and the resounding response to this perplexing problem was: It doesn't exist or I don't believe in it.

Now, we have all felt stifled and stuck, unable to write something sensible in the midst of a compelling, creative writing project, but to argue that a larger, more-sinister stumbling block to our creativity doesn't exist struck me as something truthful. After all, these are writers who are not only successful because of the popularity of their works, but for their proliferation as well. Therefore, instead of fighting against the voice of a respected circle of creative thinkers, I found myself wanting to believe what they said about writer's block, and almost instantly, after admitting out loud to myself that this phenomenon doesn't exist, I had the urge to write. I had an idea for how to finish this blog post; I had an idea for a short story; I began thinking about premises for my novel that I have never finished. It was as if the veil of fog of that morning that overhung the rolling, green hills of the wetlands and the fog that I had intentionally embedded in my brain that "sometimes it's hard to be creative, or that ideas just don't always (or in my case, even rarely) flow" simply didn't exist anymore. In fact, maybe it never did.

Oddly enough, as I began making my way back across the open grass and hills, the sun began to break through the gray clouds, its penetrating rays reflecting on the standing pools; it illuminated the dormant, yellow grass, and the morning was no longer dull and dreary, overshadowed with the fog of fear and doubt, but it was bright and vibrant, mimicking my shift in how I viewed the stifling weather of the early morning and of my previous encounters with the fog of creative futility.

I smiled as the sun shone on me, warming me as I stepped quickly back across the grass and onto the steps of my apartment. Before I opened the door, I looked back across the wetlands basking in the bright sun. The clouds had pushed their way east, and were only a memory now. Yes, we are forced to face the fog sometimes, but as writers, we don't have to live there. We can overcome the veil; and the only way to do it is to head right out into it, and make a path through it, until it finally lifts.

Look for my next blog about some helpful, motivational tips for overcoming writer's block.

Rose, Mike., Writer's Block: The Cognitive Dimension. Studies in Writing and

Rhetoric, 1984. Southern University Press, Carbondale. Print.