How Can I Have Writer’s Block if I Don’t Believe in It?
I hate to admit this, but I think I’ve been suffering from writer’s block. There’s only one problem with that — I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe you either sit down and write or you don’t. I haven’t been. So what the heck has been going on with me?
This year started off pretty awesome. I had set up my schedule to be able to write in the morning hours. Things were going quite well. I polished a book I’d written and published it.
Then something went funky. I began a new project. I still had time on my schedule to write, but I wasn’t writing as much.
I finished the first draft, a very rough draft, of the book. It needed (and still needs) a couple more passes before it’s ready for the world.
However, the second draft wasn’t going anywhere. I had the time to write, but for some reason wasn’t using it to put words on the page.
This became quite distressing when I realized I was going to miss a deadline. I’d given myself a timeline for completing this book and announcing it. My plan was to announce the title and the release date this upcoming week.
Instead, of that though you’re reading this piece about me not writing.
So what exactly happened to me? I wasn’t quite sure at first, then I picked up Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art.
It seems that my writing endeavors crashed directly into what Mr. Pressfield has labeled as “Resistance.”
I knew I needed to buy this book when I read this on its earliest pages:
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret it this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
Wow! How could he have know exactly what I was dealing with?
He answered that a few pages later, saying:
We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.
Resistance it turns out isn’t something that only writers and artists must confront. It’s a wicked force that comes against people who want to start a business, run for office, start a charity, get into better physical shape (add me to that category), students, and those seeking to overcome an addiction.
As a writer Mr. Pressfield had experienced Resistance. Plenty from what I read in his book.
But more importantly, he’d also figured out how to defeat it:
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possess comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it.
Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
I bought The War of Art on Monday afternoon and finished it by Tuesday morning.
I needed to. I wanted to know how to beat Resistance and get back to writing to get my stories out to you and the world.
How’s it going so far you might ask?
Pretty good. I’ve written three days this week and am nearly half way done with the second draft of my new book.
The obstacle wasn’t that I couldn’t write. It was that I wasn’t sitting down to write. Something was holding me back.
Now I know that something was Resistance.
Resistance doesn’t want me to write. Resistance wants me to put things off and keep my stories bottled up inside me.
I don’t want to do that. What good will my stories do if they remain internalized and never come out to meet you and your neighbors?
I just need to sit down and write. It’s the only way my stories get written. It’s the only way my writing can get better.
Resistance just whispered to me that I still missed my deadline for publishing my next book.
Yes, it’s true. But I’m back in the saddle and I have a new deadline.
And if you’re facing this invisible monster called Resistance in what you’ve set out to accomplish, all I can say is get a copy of The War of Art, read it, then get down to the work that needs to be done.
Remember as one of my first writing instructors told me: Finished is always better than great.