Photo by Mutasim Billah at http://www.flickr.com/people/xanxhor/
My Volvo needed to go in for its annual service. (Even Volvos need an occasional once-over.) I called up the local service centre. They told me they couldn’t do anything as their mechanic wasn’t working. Apparently, he had mechanic’s block.
This is what Chuck Wendig says about writer’s block:
“I do not believe in writer’s block. I believe it shares the same intellectual space as the bogeyman in your closet, as the serial killer under the bed.”
I don’t believe in writer’s block, either. And I should know; I’ve been almost constantly blocked since 1977. And I’m not talking digestive passage, here. And I’m not trying to mess with your head by claiming to suffer from a non-existent malady. No, I’ve been messing with my own head.
What makes writers so special they even have their own type of block? When you’re not writing, it’s as much brain surgeon’s block or rocket scientist’s block as it is writer’s block. Here’s the thing; writers write.
It’s only taken me close to 35 years to realise that writer’s block is just a fancy name for fear.
Take a Flight and Jump
Have you tried jumping out of a plane?
Stephen Blackmoore wrote a good guest post in Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds blog about skydiving. This is the key sentence:
“It was about jumping out of an airplane. It was never about reaching the ground safely.”
That’s what writing is; overcoming the fear of jumping out of that plane.
And that’s what this blog is about. Getting over fear and taming the demons that terrorise you and stop you writing. I know about them. All of them. I live with them – and I don’t mean my three teenagers (although the demons can seem pretty tame by comparison sometimes).