The Tired Tirades of a Blocked Writer

Merriam Webster defines it as “a psychological inhibition that prevents a writer from moving ahead with a piece.” Cambridge, in a pleasant surprise, dumbs it down by calling it a “condition of being unable to create a piece of written work because something in your mind prevents you from doing it.” It is the ridiculously detailed Google Calendar full of unfulfilled promises, and the meticulously anxious handwriting jotting down pending tasks in a picture-perfect notebook that says “planner” on top in curlicue, as if it is any different than the twenty-something GSM notebooks bought in bulk because they were five bucks a pop, as if the name “planner” is supposed to magically catapult its master into everlasting productivity, which unceremoniously reveals that I am deep, deep down this rabbit hole that they call the ‘writers’ block’. 

A Psychology Today article traces the origins of this dreaded predicament back to the 19th-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, known for his work ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, written when he was about twenty-five years old. In fact, Coleridge wrote a majority of his most well-known pieces before the age of thirty. After that, he was faced with every writer’s worst nightmare: an inability to produce, or in his one words, “an indefinite indescribable terror”. The miserable poet still managed to churn out a great deal of literary criticism in his later years, but in his mind, the scarlet letter on his chest had already proclaimed his disability. The era of the Romantics appropriated (perhaps that is an unfair term, for who are we to say what external forces might put a damper on one’s creative juices?) his illness, as their poetry was not a result of mankind’s intention, but rather a product of an impalpable and enigmatic wind playing at their inked feathers, printing the words if nurture wills it so. This sentiment was soon picked up by the French as well, and perhaps also struck the tragic genius of Arthur Rimbaud, who notoriously stopped writing after entering his twenties. 

Perhaps it was a notion not of random poetic whim but a matter of age and maturity that got these great writers to halt their craft. But the fact remains that writers’ block is a very real, very widespread, and yet still, a very invisible phenomenon faced by persons in all walks of life. 

Many psychologists debunk the psychological origins of writers’ block. It is no disease; perhaps it is more romantic to think of it as one. It is more likely a manifestation of all the hurdles a writer faces in her path. The act of writing, whether fiction or not, requires a great deal of mental expenditure, leading to the common struggle faced by writers in all walks of life. Along with the sheer amount of energy required, writers almost always thrive in an unfortunate predicament composed of fear, self-doubt, and a pressing and unattainable urge for perfectionism. They are most often their own worst critics. It is a distressing combination of comparing their work with others, never believing that their work is the best it can be, and the fear that no future piece of writing can ever be as good as the standard they have held themself up to.

It is in no one’s best interest to deny the existence of writers’ block, even if it means that a minor hiccup in a writer’s unquestionably long process, or the resultant creative vacuum of my binge-watching weekend, is excused to this invisible pandemic. The intention of this writer is neither to invalidate the struggles of millions of those infected over the centuries, nor to compare hers to Renaissance legend’s, but merely to lay down a historical justification for the affliction that has been haranguing her for quite some time. She only wonders now, how many others like her have found solace in writing about this very indisposition?