BLOCK OR EMBARRASSMENT?

Writer’s Block. Oh, what a horrible term! If you let your imagination run amok (which most writers do), it conjures up visions of a monolith blocking your path. No way around it! No way under it, over it or through it! Oh, please, somebody throw me a stick of dynamite!

I’m a member of several writer’s groups on LinkedIn, and there have been discussions on writer’s block and how to avoid or survive it. One suggestion I found helpful came from Richard Castle, the fictional author portrayed by Nathan Fillion on the TV show Castle.

“I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe in writer’s embarrassment. That’s when you’re so embarrassed by the horrendous drivel you’re writing that you can’t bear to see it on the page. After all, you can always write something. I’ve discovered that giving yourself permission to write poorly is the gateway to writing well. It may not be good, it may not make sense, but that’s okay. After enough pages of meaningless drivel, your brain will uncover something interesting, and before you know it, you’re off and writing again.”

Good advice from a fictional writer of fiction.

I’ve written pages and pages of drivel. Chapters of crap. As I write it, I know it’s crap, and I’m thinking, “At some point I’m going to hit ‘delete’ and wipe all this out.” But I keep going because this is a writing lesson and I’m determined to learn it.

It reminds me of the story of the twin boys, one a pessimist and the other an optimist. One Christmas the pessimist received every toy imaginable, yet he was deeply depressed. When asked why, he replied, “I know every one of these toys will break eventually.” His brother’s gift was a pile of manure, and his parents found him delightedly flinging it in all directions because “there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere!”

Yes, I’m embarrassed by the drivel—but not for long. At some point I’ll find that pony.