Overcoming Writer’s Block
For many writers the worst part of the writing experience is the very beginning, when they’re sitting at the kitchen table staring at a blank sheet of paper or in front of that unblinking and perfectly empty computer monitor. “I have nothing to say,” is the only thing that comes to mind. “I am XX years old and I have done nothing, discovered nothing, been nothing, and there are absolutely no thoughts in my head that anyone would ever want to read about.” This is the Censor in your brain, your Self-Critic, and sometimes that Censor is bigger than you are. Who knows what causes the ugly Censor to be there — a bad experience in third grade? something your mother said once during potty-training? — it doesn’t matter. The Censor is there for all of us, building and rebuilding this thing called Writer’s Block, one of the Censor’s many self-limiting toys. It might be some comfort to know that even professional writers suffer from Writer’s Block from time to time. Some of the greatest writers in literature — Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway — were tormented by momentary lapses in their ability to produce text — although you wouldn’t think it possible if you’ve ever tried to pick up War and Peace with one hand.
