Mind Moves Marie MurrayWriter's block is the dread of writers. It is the ultimate affliction. It closes down the writer's craft, chokes creativity and stifles inspiration. It stops the hand and arrests the pen. It silences the keyboard and leaves the screen as blank as the mind that is trying to etch its thoughts upon it.
Writer's block is a temporary inability to write and may last for a short time, for hours, days, weeks or months. In some celebrated cases it may last for years. This happened to our own writer Molly Keane for whom decimation of her confidence lasted decades and deprived us of having more of her wonderful works. And even such distinguished writers as George Orwell, who did not write his first complete novel until he was 30 and who died at the young age of 47, was not without his doubts about his writing. "I have not written a novel for seven years," he said, "but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure."
Writer's block has particular significance for writers of serials. While readers wait for the sequel to a favourite story the writer struggles to recapture the characters created who now seem to have abandoned the writer and the next book.
Writer's block is the unnameable possibility every time a writer sits down to write. It is the uninvited guest at the writer's desk: the enemy of the essayist, novelist's foe, artist's rival and the author's ultimate adversary.
Writer's block is a self-fulfilling prophesy whereby what the writer believes will happen, inevitably happens. Even entertaining the possibility of having writer's block by those whose craft is writing, immediately constricts creativity, impedes imagination and brings about that which it seeks to avoid.
There are particular psychological aspects to writer's block. While by definition a block should be no more than a temporary inability to write, writer's block is more than a period during which writing does not occur.
For it weaves its way into the soul of the writer and whispers "reject"to every word the writer writes.
It sniggers at every sentence, laughs at each line of prose and protests at each poetic attempt. It is the critic that condemns what is not yet written; the bad review before the book is begun. Writer's block is the obituary that precedes the birth of the writer's words. And how can you resuscitate what is not yet born, give birth to what is not yet conceived and conceive of what is not yet imagined but already unconsciously condemned?
Writer's block is the affliction of omission.
The classic visual image of writer's block is that of the writer at typewriter surrounded by a snowstorm of scrunched up pages of paper upon the surrounding floor. This image implies that the writer extracted these pages in a fury of frustrated failure at the inadequacy of the words that were chosen to convey what the author wished to say.
But how does the author know when the page warrants crumpling and when it does not?
How does the writer know what should stay
and what should be deleted? How does a writer judge his or her own work? What is writing about?
"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle like a long bout of some painful illness," wrote George Orwell in his collection of essays entitled Why I Write. "One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand," he wrote.
But if writing is a horrible exhausting thing, how much more horrible and exhausting is writer's block? For the former at least provides evidence of the author's endeavour while the latter is distinguished by the absence of words. If writing is a painful illness, how poor is the prognosis for the writer with writer's block confronted by the demon of fear?
Fear constricts the writer, fear of failure; fear of being found out, of not being able to find the words, of ordering them incorrectly and of not making any sense to oneself or others of descending into "sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug".
Writing occurs when writers sit down to say things that seem to be worth saying which they know their words will convey. Writing occurs when an idea, long germinating, forms itself into a coherent set of sentences to communicate it. It invites intuition. It is not self-censorious. It allows the stream of consciousness to flow before it dams its course. It is not contrived although it may be crafted. It often occurs when the words appear as if from elsewhere upon the page.
Writing is not self-conscious. It is at its most creative when it is least conscious. It is least conscious when it is willing to abandon itself to what may emerge and to trust in that process. Artist Paul Gauguin once said, "I shut my eyes in order to see."
The writer must also enter an inner place, an altered space where the excitement of writing exceeds the fear of failure. This is a place where there is a wish to see, a willingness to describe; an acceptance of the imperfection of words however exquisitely they may be wrought or ordinarily written.
mmurray@irish-times.ie
Clinical Psychologist Marie Murray is Director of The Student Counselling Services at University College Dublin