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Rage Against the Blank Page
Now that I collaborate, edit, and work with other writers, I find myself both fighting writer’s block and helping others do the same.
“The only way out is through” is a cliché I’ve seen in motivational posters, heard in support meetings, and read as email signature taglines for years. Like most clichés though, before it became mass marketing pablum, there was truth in it. When it comes to writing, it certainly can be true.
Similar to most creative functions, writing is highly susceptible to both inside and outside influences. Outside factors like time, deadlines, required components, and trying to divine what your audience is hearing from the words you are producing all play a role. Internally, things like mood, personal issues, health, and even good old fashioned tiredness greatly affect what we produce when the blank page is the enemy.
But then there is writer’s block, that dreaded happening when the river of mental ideas dams itself with some unexplainable force and stops the flow of productivity altogether. It is a problem as old as the written word itself, and the prescribed ways to alleviate it are numerous. But if there was any one cure to it, that person who discovered it would be famous for writing about it already, so suffice to say that many must…
